APPLE

The mythic tree of the Underworld, the tree of immortality, is a common idea in many cultures. In late Celtic mythology, the Isle of Avalon, where King Arthur was taken to die, was either an island of the dead or a portal to the Underworld. The word “Avalon” means “orchard”; compare the Old Welsh word afal, meaning “apple.” Avalon was the resting-place of heroes and kings: a particular kind of sacred grove—of apple trees.

The apple itself is a magic fruit, again as it is in many ancient cultures. Although the Bible does not say so, tradition has it that the forbidden fruit in the Hebrew Garden of Eden was an apple. In the Greek Epic Cycle, the entire drama of the Trojan War is set in motion by the goddess Strife rolling her Golden Apple inscribed “To the Loveliest” among the other goddesses—for them to quarrel over.

In Somerset the oldest apple tree in the orchard is known as the Apple Tree Man, and the fertility of the orchard as a whole is supposed to reside in that one tree. The Apple Tree Man is also believed to be able to speak—with a Somerset accent.

A grafted apple, an “ymp-tree,” is very dangerous because it is under fairy influence. If a man falls asleep underneath an ymp-tree, he is liable to be carried away by fairy ladies.

The apple recurs again and again in European myths, and it is there too in Celtic myth as the fruit of the World Tree, the axis of the universe. To the Celts, the apple is the fruit of immortality and prophecy. In the old European fairy-tale about Snow White, the heroine is poisoned by a shiny red apple given to her by the witch. It makes her fall into a sleep of oblivion. This makes the connection with the Otherworldly orchard at the end of the world, where apple trees form the landscape of rest and oblivion.

The apple orchard as the home of the dead is reminiscent of the ancient Greek idea of the fields of asphodel, a typically Mediterranean picture of an idyllic mountainside landscape, away from the everyday world, yet carpeted with beautiful flowers. The asphodel often grows today in the dappled shade of olive groves. The newly restored epic The Apple of Discord describes the spirit of the hero Palamedes walking off after his murder by Odysseus to the fields of asphodel. In the same poem, the long-dead spirits who visit Menelaus in the Labyrinth at Knossos are sent back to where they belong by a ritual of libation performed by King Idomeneus:

Then back they fell as if sucked away by the wind,

a vortex, both ghosts and gods summoned away

by Hermes of Kyllene, bearing the golden wand

with which he charms the eyes of men or wakens

whom he wills. He waved them on, all squeaking

like the bats in a cavern’s underworld, all flitting,

criss-cross in the dark. With ever fainter cries

the shades trailed after Hermes, the pure deliverer.

He led them down dark corridors of time

past shores of dreams and the narrows of the sunset

in swift flight to the place where the Dead have their home,

the wilderness of asphodel at the world’s end.

The Apple of Discord, Book 4, lines 194–205

ASH TREE

The ash is said to be the first tree that was ever created. In Teutonic (Germanic) myth, the World Ash Tree is called Yggdrasil. Its roots penetrate to the heart of the Earth, where the three Norns, the Fates, weave the destiny of the human race.

In the Celtic world-view the ash is the queen of the forest; the oak is king. The ash is a huge tree with a root system that penetrates deep into the ground, while its branches soar high into the sky. It is a symbol of massive spiritual growth, of expansion, and of integration. The great tree holds together the three worlds—Heaven, Earth, and Underworld—and as such it symbolizes the grandest and most ambitious of visions.

One ash tree in County Cork, in the parish of Clenor, was treated with special veneration. The local people never cut its branches, even when they were running very short of firewood. Another ash tree, in Borrisokane, was called the Old Bell Tree. This one was sacred to May Day rites, and the local people believed that if anyone burned in their hearth so much as a single chip from it his whole house would burn down.

In England, the ash has been seen as a magical protection against mischievous spirits.

AWEN

Awen is a Welsh word meaning inspiration, in the specific sense of poetic inspiration. It was used historically to describe the divine inspiration of the Welsh bards. A poet or a soothsayer who is inspired is described as an awenydd. Today, awen is sometimes used to describe poets and musicians.

The word has also become a girls’ name. It is related to awel, which means “breeze.”

The first time the word is known to have been used was in Nennius’ book Historia Brittonum, written in the late eighth century.

In neo-Druidry, awen is symbolized by three straight lines, diverging slightly as they descend, each with a dot at the top. This symbol is not ancient, but was invented by Iolo Morgannwg. Different neo-Druid groups have different interpretations of the awen symbol. To some the three lines represent the three elements of earth, sea, and air. To others the three lines are love, wisdom, and truth. They could also symbolize body, mind, and spirit. Some see awen as symbolizing the inspiration of truth, and the three lines indicate the understanding of truth, the love of truth, and the maintaining of truth.

The Order of Bards, Ovates, and Druids, a revived druidic order, has described the three lines as rays emanating from three points of light, which represent the triple aspect of deity. The three points also symbolize the points on the horizon where the sun rises at the equinoxes and solstices. The emblem of the order of Bards, Ovates, and Druids is ringed by three concentric circles to represent the three circles of creation.

BASKET OF FRUIT

The gods were expected to be providers. They were in charge of the production of food in all its forms: domestic livestock, wild animals that might be hunted, birds, fruit, grain, and vegetables. A simple way of summarizing this produce in religious art was to depict a basket of fruit. The concept was similar to the way a church might be dressed for a traditional harvest festival, with fruit and loaves to symbolize the harvest safely gathered in.

The goddess Nehalennia was a fertility goddess, and was invariably shown with vegetation and crops. A Romano-Celtic stone altar dedicated to her found in Holland shows her sitting beside a basket overfilled with fruit. She was a provider, and the basket shows her produce (see Cornucopia).

BEAR

An apt symbol for the strength, wildness, and ferocity of the great warrior. King Arthur’s name seems to be derived from the Celtic artos, meaning “bear” or “bearlike.” The association is not confined to war-like men either: warrior-queens might also be called bears. In Gaul there was a bear called Artio.

BOAR

The boar was a wild beast of the forest, like the stag, and both were treated as highly symbolic of the forces of wild nature. The boar hunt culminated in a pork banquet, and at this banquet the pecking order among the warriors would be established, usually accompanied by disputes and quarrels (see People: Food and Feasting). Sometimes pork joints were buried with warriors, presumably as a way of awarding the dead man his “champion’s joint of pork.” Pork was also a hospitality symbol.

Wild boar, and even nominally domesticated pigs, can be very destructive and unmanageable. In Irish folk-tales, pigs are strong and destructive, and they can lure men into the Underworld. Magic pigs are involved in ritual hunts where the point of the story is the invincibility of the pig.

The magical nature of the pig is also found in Welsh tradition; in the Tale of Cwlhwch and Olwen supernatural pigs are people transformed.

Certain Celtic divinities, often female, are responsible for beasts that are hunted in the forests. The Romans naturally identified these goddesses with their own huntress goddess, Diana. Arduinna is one of these Celtic goddesses. She frequents the woods of the Ardennes, riding on the back of a wild boar.

BOAT

A pre-Roman manifestation of a god. In the Bronze Age and early Iron Age, objects or attributes were often made to stand in for deities, rather like the double-ax standing in for the Minoan goddess of ancient Crete. In the very early days of Rome, the Rome of the Kings, Mars was represented by spears, and those spears were deemed to be capable of moving of their own accord in time of danger: they were Mars. The pre-Roman conquest world of the Celts was very like this, with few humanoid representations of deities.

Initially, there were few figurative representations of deities because the Druids did not want them to be seen unveiled. This changed through time, as the great sanctuaries were developed and large-scale public ceremonies were enacted in them. The gods were required to attend and take part; they therefore had to be visible. The massive posts that stood at the centers of the sanctuary enclosures were almost certainly conceived as “gods.” Julius Caesar describes simulacra, which implies something rather different from the classical statues of gods that he was used to seeing in Rome. Probably these posts were carved in a very stylized way, like Native American totem poles. Maximus of Tyre wrote, “The Celts devote a cult to Zeus, but the Celtic image of Zeus is a great oak.”

Through time, and with increasing exposure to Roman culture, these Celtic simulacra became more realistic. Most, though not all, of the more realistic figurative representations of the gods and goddesses belong to the Romano-Celtic period.

BRIGHID’S CROSS

An Irish pagan symbol that has become a Christian symbol by adoption. It is usually made from rushes and consists of a central woven square and four radial arms that are tied at the ends. It is a specific design of corn dolly.

The design is probably related to the swastika, an ancient sun symbol, with its four arms pointing to the four points of the compass. The four arms also represent the elements: earth, air, fire, and water. Like so many other Celtic symbols, this one has a complex ancestry and expresses more than one idea. This symbolic compression is typical of the ancient Celtic mindset.

The crosses are associated with several traditions and rituals. At one time it was believed that a Brighid’s cross had the power to protect a house from fire and evil. It is still to be seen hanging in many Irish and Irish-American kitchens to ward off evil.

The cross is associated with Brighid of Kildare, who is one of the patron saints of Ireland. The crosses are traditionally made on February 1, which in the Irish calendar is St. Brighid’s feast day, a borrowing from the ancient past: this is the old pagan Celtic feast of Imbolg.

St. Brighid and her cross are linked together in a Christian folk-tale. A pagan chieftain in the neighborhood of Kildare lay dying and some Christians in his house sent for Brighid to talk to him about the Christian faith. When she got there, the man was delirious and conversion was impossible. She tried to comfort him and stooped down to pick up some rushes from the floor, weaving them into the form of a cross, fastening the points together. The man asked her what she was doing and she explained. He listened with growing interest. In the end he was baptized just as he died.

The cross is likely to be far older than this, though. “Saint” Brighid was one of the Tuatha dé Dannan, the goddess Brighid.

The Christian Brighid’s cross is likely to be descended from a pagan cross. Its original meaning may even be preserved in modern superstitions about the cross protecting a house from fire. There is nothing in the Christian story about St. Brighid and burning houses, so this is likely to have been borrowed from some earlier, pre-Christian, belief.

BULL

The bull was in use as a symbol and decorative motif from the Bronze Age onward. This shows an enduring admiration for the bull’s characteristics: strength, virility, and ferocity.

The ox, from which the virility and ferocity have been removed, was a symbol of agriculture and prosperity. At Mont Bego in the south of France, a sacred mountain was decorated with rock carvings that feature the ox in plow-teams.

Bronze vessels made in the Bronze Age were often decorated with bull’s horns. Clay bull’s horns mounted on stands were made in Hungary in the seventh century BC. This veneration of the bull and its horns was shared by the Mediterranean cultures too; the bull was important in Minoan and Mycenaean cultures and it is possible that the bull cult was ultimately inherited from the Minoans.

It is difficult to be sure what the bull may have meant in the Celtic world, when many aspects were borrowed from still more ancient belief systems. It has to be remembered that in the Roman world the bull was an emblem of Jupiter, and in the earlier Mycenaean-Minoan world the bull was a transformation of Poseidon. So the Celts too may have seen the bull as a god, or at least as godlike.

A peculiarity of Iron Age bull’s horns is that they are shown with knobs on the end. It is not known why, though it could reflect some ritual or ceremonial situation in which it was deemed safer to have the dangerous points of the (real) bull’s horns covered.

The (pre-Roman) Gundestrup cauldron shows the bull several times, and it carries a large scene on the baseplate showing a bull sacrifice. Bull imagery can be seen in Gaul and Britain, but rarely in conjunction with any human or humanoid images. One significant exception was found at Rheims, where a bull is seen associated with Cernunnos and a stag—just as at Gundestrup.

Some elaborate ritual deposits have been found that show how important bulls and cattle in general were as religious symbols. At South Cadbury there is plenty of evidence of this in the Iron Age. On the approach to a shrine the remains of newborn calves were deposited. Cattle skulls were set upright in pits, and deliberately buried in that way. A full-grown cow was buried outside the door of a porched shrine. And this kind of ritual burial of cattle was going on at a great many places in Britain. In about AD 300 there was an underground shrine at Cambridge where more elaborate animal rituals went on; there were burials of a complete horse and a complete bull, as well as hunting dogs—and all carefully arranged.

The writings of classical commentators confirm the sacrificial nature of some of these events. Pliny describes white bulls being sacrificed in the mistletoe-cutting ceremony of the Druids.

Cattle were an important part of the warrior-hero culture; cattle-raids were a major focus. The Cattle Raid of Cooley is an Irish tale in which the supernatural plays a part. The climax of the tale is a conflict between two great supernatural bulls who had in earlier incarnations been divine swineherds; because of their previous existences, the two bulls had the power of human thought.

In Ireland, bulls were connected with the choosing of kings. There was a bull-feast at which a bull was killed and the meat was eaten by a man who then fell asleep. Four Druids chanted their incantations over him and the sleeper saw in a dream the person who was to become king. Possibly this is what lies behind the image on the base of the Gundestrup cauldron, where a large bull awaits sacrifice. Its horns have become detached, and may have been deliberately made so that they were detachable.

CAULDRON

The cauldron was a central object in every home—the huge cooking pot sitting on the fire or hanging over it. It was used for most domestic cooking. It was also used for carrying water and for bathing. It was probably the finest object owned by most households.

Its central place in the home makes it a profoundly female symbol. The hemispherical shape also looks like the belly of a pregnant woman, which makes it a natural symbol for motherhood, childbirth, and fertility. When used for cooking, ingredients are put into the cauldron and transformed into a stew, so it is also symbol of transformation and regeneration, and of passage from one world to another.

The cauldron holds a central place in the Celtic belief system. It was used for divination and also for sacrificial rites. It was a symbol of the realm of water, and some finely made and beautifully ornamented cauldrons were sacrificed to the gods of rivers and lakes.

Sometimes the ocean itself was regarded as a huge cauldron.

A big cauldron in the Otherworld was the source of inspiration for poets and musicians. The goddess Caridwen owned a great cauldron, and it was from this that the bard Taliesin drew his legendary bardic talent (see Myths: The History of Taliesin).

The Gauls associated the cauldron with the god Taranis. Sacrifices to this god by Druidic priests are supposed to have been drowned in a cauldron, possibly in a belief that they would be reborn. Celtic myths tell of a cauldron into which dead warriors could be thrown and brought back to life again.

The Dagda’s huge cauldron is one of the four legendary treasures of Ireland. It is a magic object that supplies endless quantities of food and drink. This cauldron of the Otherworld gained a new lease of life in the Arthurian tales, where it remained an object of great mystery and veneration, but this time associated closely with Christ. The Arthurian myth was endlessly told and retold through the Christian era, and the Celtic cauldron, turned into the chalice, became a major focus of Christian liturgy. The two combined in the legend of the Holy Grail, where the two vessels became fused to make a new symbolic object (see Grail Quest; Places: Hochdorf; Religion: Cernunnos, The Daghda, Druids).

CELTIC CROSS

The Celtic cross, sometimes called a ring cross, is a hybrid type of monument that incorporates three very distinct elements: the cross of Christ, a circle that is a sun symbol, and a megalith. The megalith, a great standing stone, is an ancestral monument that is deeply embedded in the Atlantic Celtic tradition. It is perfectly natural that it should somehow survive the Christian conversion of the communities of the first millennium, at least in this modified form.

There were already some carved embellishments being added to megalithic monuments back in the late Neolithic, such as the “mother goddess” carving on one of the uprights at Stonehenge and the spiral carvings on Breton passage graves. That developed further in the Iron Age with some “all-over” carved designs such as the one covering the Turoe Stone. The development of the megalith into a massive cross with all-over figurative decoration was a simple next step.

The ring cross was a very widespread symbol in the ancient world, though with the cross contained inside the circle. It was a sun cross, a wheel cross, or Odin’s cross. The sign naturally first appeared in the Bronze Age, where it represents very literally a four-spoked chariot wheel, the sort of chariot wheel made by the Minoans and Mycenaeans in the period 1700–1200 BC. It was also an astrological sign, symbolizing not the sun but the Earth—both the planet and the substance. It was a common sun symbol in the pagan Celtic world, and one that was easy for early Christians to adopt and convert. Extending the arms of the cross outward, outside the circle, emphasized the cross at the expense of the circle and some people argue that this too is a symbolic development, showing that Christ worship has overcome sun worship.

The Irish promoted a legend that St. Patrick or perhaps St. Declan introduced the Celtic cross during the time of the conversion of the Irish pagans to Christianity. This is hard to support, in that there are no examples from that early period for us to look at. The idea that the joint symbol is to show Christ’s supremacy over the pagan sun-worshipers does not work so well psychologically—it is more provocative that persuasive. There may nevertheless be something in the suggestion that the sun symbol was added to the cross in order to make the imagery more familiar and more congenial to converts. Another possibility is that the characteristic perforation of the cross to give the sun symbol four spokes was a deliberate attempt to make the combined symbol into a sun wheel, which was a powerful religious image in the Iron Age. A more important idea, spiritually and psychologically, is that the ring cross brings together, combines, and welds two religious systems; it is the old and the new together.

Given that Christ was sometimes depicted at the center of the cross, and therefore also at the center of the circle, the circle could double as a halo, and it may even be the origin of the halo. The Celtic cross is a quintessentially Celtic symbol, rich in multilayered meaning.

The distinctive British tradition of building monumental high stone crosses was under way by about 750, and it is likely that there were even earlier versions in painted wood, though these have not survived. The Irish crosses were usually shorter. Some of the damaged monuments imply that the sculptors must have become aware early on that the horizontal “arms” of a stone cross were vulnerable and easily snapped off. It may be this that led to the addition of the circle—not so much a symbolic statement, more a structural necessity.

The cross at Monasterboice in Ireland is a particularly fine example of a Celtic cross. Its four branches are all richly decorated, and the circle is also embellished with a beaded pattern. Then the tall pillar or shaft of the cross has six tiers of decoration, with each register carrying, typically, three figures on each face.

Other fine Celtic crosses survive at Clonmacnoise in Ireland and Iona. St. Piran’s cross is another, at Perranporth in Cornwall. In Scotland, there are fine examples in the Dupplin Cross, Iona Abbey Crosses, Kidalton Cross, and St. Martin’s Cross.

It is interesting to see the overlap between Celtic cross-making and Anglo-Saxon cross-making. The Ruthwell Cross, in Dumfriesshire, Scotland, represents what Anglo-Saxon craftsmen made of this new fashion.

There are similar Celtic crosses in France, mainly in the west (Normandy, Brittany, and Limousin), but many of these were made late, in the fifteenth century. These “crosses with halo,” croix nimbées, have the same general design (cross superimposed on circle) but are more intricately carved.

Celtic crosses are found in Galicia too, where they are often mounted on top of granaries as a protection against evil. They are also found on churches. A very characteristic Galician take on the Celtic cross design is the Celtic cross with a Celtic knot. The St. Maur cross at Glanfeuil Abbey is thought to date from the tenth century. One of the most intricate cross-and-knot carvings is the one on the roof gable of the church of St. Susanna at Santiago de Compostela.

The nineteenth-century Celtic revival in Ireland led to a revival in Celtic cross carving. In 1853, casts of several fine historic high crosses were displayed at the Dublin Industrial Exhibition. In 1857, an illustrated book showing the designs was published. These events stimulated a new wave of interest in the old Celtic heritage. The main manifestation of this was the adaptation of the high cross to make smaller monuments for cemeteries, for individual and family graves, first in Dublin, then elsewhere, then later still for war memorials. The use of the Celtic cross for individual grave markers was a departure from medieval usage; in the Middle Ages the large crosses were communal markers.

Suddenly the Celtic cultural revival had a logo. Celtic spirituality also had its identity realized in an image. The jewelry designed and made by Alexander and Euphemia Ritchie, working on Iona from 1899 to 1940, popularized the use of the Celtic cross. Now the Celtic cross is seen everywhere, in T-shirts, tattoos, and logos for the Gaelic Athletic Association and Northern Ireland’s national football team. Somehow, in Ireland and Germany too, it has acquired a white nationalist undertone, rather in the way that the flag of St. George has in England (see Religion: Wheel God; Celtic Twilight and Revival).

CITY SWALLOWED UP BY THE SEA

The idea of a lost, uncharted, untraceable land somewhere in the ocean away to the west is a very Celtic dream. Both Cornish and Breton myths have the story of the lost land of Lyonesse.

The name “Lyonesse” is derived from the French Léoneis. Some think that in turn may be derived from the Latin name for Lothian, Lodonesia, but it is not clear how an area in Scotland could have become associated with submerged lands in the English Channel. The writer of the French Prose Tristan placed Léoneis, a land area, adjacent to Cornwall, and in both French and English versions of French tales, it is associated with Cornwall. Its exact whereabouts were always left vague.

The tale of Lyonesse seems to be a folk memory of a widespread event: the encroachment of the sea due to a rising sea level in prehistoric times. The Cornish name for St. Michael’s Mount, now an island in a bay, is Karrek Loos y’n Koos, “The Grey Rock in the Wood.” This sounds like a memory of a wooded landscape on the site of the bay, with the rock of the mount sticking up out of it. At low water it is still possible to see remnants of a submerged forest. But these trees have not been growing for 4,000 or 5,000 years, so it is stretching the idea of a folk memory of submergence over rather too long a span of time.

When sea-level was lower, several thousand years ago, the Scilly Isles would have been one large island, and some of the seabed between Scilly and Land’s End would have been exposed as dry land. Interestingly, the legendary lost land in that area has a specific Cornish name, Lethesow. The Seven Stones reef, where the oil tanker Torrey Canyon was wrecked in 1967, was part of Lethesow, which means “the milky ones,” a reference to the white water across the reef.

The name Lyonesse was not given to this area until the sixteenth century. Even so, the mystery of its location has added to its power. By the nineteenth century, in Idylls of the King, Lord Tennyson was making Lyonesse the place where the final battle between Arthur and Modred took place, and Lyonesse became part of the Arthurian legend.

Then rose the King and moved his host by night

And ever pushed Sir Mordred, league by league,

Back to the sunset bound of Lyonesse –

A land of old upheaven from the abyss

By fire, to sink into the abyss again…

Here Lyonesse becomes another transformation of the Celtic Otherworld, a mystical Isle of the Dead. Tennyson himself felt this, instinctively. Lyonesse was a place…

Where fragments of forgotten peoples dwelt,

And the long mountains ended in a coast

Of ever-shifting sand, and far away

The phantom circle of a moaning sea.

Naturally, in the Christian era the story of the peopled land overwhelmed by the sea was turned into a British Sodom and Gomorrah. The people who had lived there were wicked; they had brought down upon themselves the wrath of God. But the place of Lyonesse in myth was also more mysterious than that, and similar to the place of Tir nan Og in Irish myth.

In Brittany the parallel is with the Ker Ys, the city of Ys, drowned as a consequence of its sinful lifestyle, with a single survivor who manages to escape on a horse: King Grallon (see Myths: The Legend of Ys).

In Wales there is an equivalent to Lyonesse and Ker Ys: a mythical drowned kingdom in Cardigan Bay called Cantre’r Gwaelod.

There were other mysterious lands that lay beneath the seas, known to Gaelic-speaking Celts as Sorcha and Lochlann, places where magic ruled. Lochlann was inhabited by spirit-folk who brought fertility to the land and ensured good harvests.

There is a Welsh tradition that Merlin was not only Welsh but foretold that the town of Carmarthen would one day be swallowed up by the sea.

CLADDAGH

An Irish symbol devised in the sixteenth century as a symbol of eternal love and fidelity. It is named after and it seems originally made at a Galway village.

It consists of a cross with a crown at each terminal. At the crossing is a heart, held by a hand on each side. The crowned heart and hands is a motif added to wedding rings. It may be a borrowing from an ancient Roman fidelity ring design, the Fede, which featured clasped hands.

CLOAK

The god Lugh had a cloak that made him invisible and enabled him to pass unseen among a host of warriors to rescue his son. The idea is an obvious one, as a cloak, especially one with a hood, in effect made the wearer invisible. Wearing a hooded cloak is equivalent to wearing a mask of anonymity. From anonymity it is a short storytelling step to invisibility.

The Cerne Giant had a cloak, no longer visible, but detected by a geophysical survey in the 1990s, draped over his left arm (see Cerne Abbas). In the Iron Age this was the standard type of shield for a warrior who could not afford proper weaponry. Interestingly, Iron Age people often liked to think of their gods in this way—as People Like Themselves.

Manannán, the Irish sea god, possesses a magic cloak; if this cloak is shaken between two people it is impossible for them ever to meet again. This may be a metaphor for the fogs of the Irish Sea. The Lady of the Lake, Vivien, has a similar cloak, again probably symbolizing the mist that often hangs over lakes. The British hero Cassivellaunus is said to have worn a magic tartan plaid that made him invisible.

CORN DOLLY

Corn dollies are still made today, but more or less as a picturesque wall decoration with little or no symbolic value. In past centuries, the corn dolly was a powerful fertility symbol associated with the agricultural year.

It was once believed that the spirit of the grain harvest resided in the corn itself. When the harvest was gathered, the corn was cut down and the corn goddess became homeless. Farmers made a crude image of her out of the last stalks of the harvested crop, as a dwelling-place for her. She overwintered in the farmer’s house, waiting to be returned to the plowland in the spring. When the fields were plowed, the dolly was taken out and plowed back into the soil: the goddess was returning to the earth.

The custom of making corn dollies was widespread and each area had its own design. They are always stylized, and many of them are quite abstract, looking nothing at all like goddesses.

CORNUCOPIA

Iron Age goddesses are often shown bearing a long, straight, cone-shaped container brimming with fruit. This is the horn of plenty, often referred to by its Latin name, cornucopia, and representing the boundless riches of the Earth. It is the most common symbol of abundance, particularly in relation to food.

A Gallic image shows the goddess Rosmerta offering a cornucopia and a small offering-dish, a patera. On other sculptures, where a goddess is accompanied by a god, she may hold both or just the cornucopia, while her male partner holds the patera. Another image from Gaul shows a triad of goddesses, all holding a cornucopia, but only the middle one holding a patera: maybe this is to show that the middle goddess is a little more important than the other two.

A relief from Aquitaine shows a goddess with a crown holding a cornucopia of fruit and vine leaves, to show the fertility and productivity of the region. The stone image is dedicated to Tutela, a “Fortuna” goddess who was the patroness of a town, possibly Massilia. When the deities appear in couples, male and female, it is usually the female who holds the cornucopia, held upright like a sceptre (at Dijon, Pagny-la-Ville, Alesia, and Glanum). The frequency of the association of the horn of plenty with a divine couple suggests that the “plenty” is thought of as a product of a divine marriage.

There are carvings showing the horse-goddess Epona carrying a cornucopia while riding her horse. It is a symbol of productivity; some images abbreviate the cornucopia to a single apple, as on the fine Epona sculpture from Kastel, but the symbolic thrust of the image is exactly the same.

Sometimes, as with other religious symbols, the cornucopia stands on its own. A stone altar dedicated to the goddess Nehalennia has a cornucopia carved onto its front (see Basket of Fruit; Religion: Altar).

CRANE

A well-carved relief from Trier shows the god Esus chopping at a willow tree that contains a bull’s head and three egrets. A completely separate image of Esus shows him hacking down a willow, while on an adjacent scene another willow is shown associated with three egrets and a bull. The bull here is mysteriously named Tarvostrigaranos. Some of this symbolism is straightforward: egrets favor willows, and they also eat the ticks off the backs of cattle. But it is less obvious why egrets, bulls, and willows should be important in association with a particular god. One idea is that Esus is chopping down the willow as a form of sacrifice and the willow is a Tree of Life; perhaps what we are seeing is the laying-low of life in winter in preparation for the coming spring.

The birds may represent human souls, as in other cultures. Chopping down the willow causes the birds to fly away, so the image may be a metaphor for death and the flight of the soul to the Otherworld.

Cranes, like willows, are associated with water and wetland. Both lake and marsh were foci for ritual offerings, so cranes were birds that frequented sacred places. Cranes and other waterbirds were often shown on coins. The crane and the crow were both symbols of the Otherworld, and heralds of death.

It may be significant that in Irish folk-tales, which contain a good deal of ancient material, cranes can represent women. In that context, the Maiden Castle bull, with its three female riders, suddenly finds its meaning; the three women can shapeshift, in true Celtic style, into three birds (see Rule of Three). This is therefore a similar image to the one associated in Gaul with Esus. In both Irish and Welsh literature there are magic birds, sometimes appearing in threes. Cliodnu, an Irish goddess, has three birds nourished by everlasting apples; the birds are able to sing sick people to sleep. The sweetly singing birds of Rhiannon are able to bring joy and forgetfulness for seven years (see Myths: Blackbirds).

CUP

See The Grail Quest.

DAISY

The daisy is a sun symbol. It is said that the custom of dressing children in daisy chains arose from a desire to protect them from being carried off by fairies.

DEATH BY SORCERY

Killing by an act of sorcery was practised in the remote past. Surprisingly, it has been practised in more recent times as well. The method is to use an image or effigy of the enemy who is to be destroyed and inflict harm on them by way of the image.

A conspiracy is said to have been aimed at Duff, King of Scotland from 962 to 966. The king was suffering from some ailment without any obvious physical cause. He had painful sweats, could not sleep, and was wasting away. A group of sorceresses or witches in the town of Forres was suspected of planning to assassinate him. They were caught in the act of basting an effigy of the king over a fire and reciting spells as they did so. The image was destroyed, and the witches were themselves brought to trial, condemned, and burned. King Duff recovered sufficiently to lead his army against the rebels who had conspired against him and deliver retribution.

In the Middle Ages, effigies used for death by sorcery were usually made of wax, which melted easily in a flame. Presumably the idea was that by magic this would cause a wasting of the victim’s flesh. The witches described these effigies as “pictures.” In later times, the effigies were more commonly made of clay. Thorns, pins, and needles were pushed into the soft clay, as if sticking knives into flesh. “Elf-arrows” (crude flint-flake darts) were thrown at the clay image to the accompaniment of spells. Finally the clay image was broken up. At this point it was expected that the victim would give up the ghost.

A few decades ago one of these clay effigies was found in a Highland stream. It had been placed there so the water would gradually wear it away, implying that the sorcerer wanted his enemy to suffer a long and slow decline.

Another clay effigy, in the Pitt-Rivers Museum in Oxford, came from Inverness and was donated by a “Major G” of that county. It was “intended for the Major,” and had been stuck full of pins and nails and left at his house.

A minister in the Scottish Highlands had a similar experience. He appeared to be suffering from some sort of wasting disease and when his friends investigated they found a clay effigy in the stream beside his house.

Within the last century or so, sheeps’ hearts full of pins have been discovered stuck up the chimneys of cottages in both Scotland and Wales.

These things happened in modern communities that professed to be Christian, yet ancient pagan Celtic practices still went on. And perhaps they still do.

DOG

The dog was an important domestic animal—a companion, a guardian, a help in hunting—so it was likely to find some cult-role in Celtic religion. Dogs appear repeatedly in Celtic cult images and their bones are commonly found in ritual deposits.

The dog was not just associated with one deity, but with several. In the Mediterranean world (which might be considered a cousin of the Celtic world), the Greco-Roman healer god Aesculapius was accompanied by a dog. The huntress goddess, Diana, was also accompanied by a dog. The mythic monster Cerberus was a giant dog. These different roles for dogs were reflected in the Celtic religious world. The Gaulish healing-goddess Sequana was left offerings at the source of the Seine in the form of images of people with dogs. The magical value of the dog lay in its ability to heal itself with its own saliva, and this gave it a natural position as the companion of a healing god or goddess.

Sucellus, the hammer god, was sometimes accompanied by a dog; in Dacia, he was accompanied by a three-headed dog. In Celtic religion triplism of this kind can be highly significant—and classical mythology also had its three-headed dog. At Lydney, the British healer-god Nodens was represented nine times not by a human image, but by his canine helper: a deerhound (see Rule of Three).

Just as Epona was inseparable from her horse (or horses), so the Gaulish goddess Nehalennia was inseparable from her dog, which is often shown looking intently up at her in the way that dogs often gaze at their owners. As far as posterity is concerned, Nehalennia’s identity is defined entirely by the companionship of her dog.

There seems to have been an association of the dog with the Underworld. There were many ritual deposits of dogs in Britain, mainly in pits or wells. In its role as hunting companion, the dog was associated with speed, power, and killing instinct, and perhaps this killing aspect was how it gained an association with the Underworld.

DRAGON

The belief in dragons seems to have been worldwide. Every ancient culture had its dragons.

Dragons are multiple symbols. They represent the whole of creation; they are guardians of treasure; and they obstruct the road to spiritual gain. Overcoming them is a major rite of passage—a rite of release.

In modern times, dragons are usually represented as gigantic lizards, with two pairs of lizard-like legs and wings, though they rarely fly. A dragon without front legs is known as a wyvern. The nineteenth-century discovery of dinosaurs altered the way dragons were represented; today it is common in artwork and film to depict dragons as fantastic dinosaurs.

Perhaps the most familiar dragon is St. George’s dragon: a small heraldic beast with bat’s wings, a sting in its tail, and wide-opening jaws that breathe fire. This quaint little creature, familiar to us from any number of works of art, is a long way from the dragons of Celtic legend, which tend to be gigantic, wingless, wormlike serpents. They are very long and their breath is poisonous rather than flaming. The Celtic dragon is a scaly water-snake and haunts wells, pools, and lakes; it also lives in caves.

Dragons have a penchant for maidens and they often diligently watch over hoards of treasure. They are usually depicted as malevolent. Their ferocity symbolizes the wild and destructive forces of nature, yet they are believed to be very wise. They are also long-lived.

Not all dragons are malevolent, however. Y Ddraig Goch, the Red Dragon, is the benign symbol of Wales itself.

Stories of dragons from England are not necessarily of Anglo-Saxon origin. Folk-tales told in the Middle Ages in England are likely to belong to the pre-Anglo-Saxon culture.

The Dragon of Kingston was choked by a great boulder rolled down a hill into his mouth as he opened it to belch out flames.

The Dragon of St. Leonard’s Forest, near Horsham in Sussex, was a land-based dragon. There were repeated sightings of it in 1614, which were vividly described in a pamphlet. The details it describes are very difficult to explain:

A True and Wonderful Discourse relating a strange and monstrous Serpent (or Dragon) lately discovered, and yet living, to the great Annoyance and divers Slaughters of both Men and Cattell, by his strong and violent Poison: in Sussex, two Miles from Horsham, in a Woode called St Leonard’s Forrest, and thirtie Miles from London, this present Month of August, 1614. With the true Generation of Serpents.

In Sussex, there is a pretty market-towne, called Horsham, and neare unto to it a forrest, called St Leonard’s Forrest, and there is an unfrequented place, heathie, vaultie, full of unwholesome shades, and overgrowne hollowes, where this serpent is thought to be bred; but wheresoever bred, certaine and too true it is, that there it lives. Within three or four miles compasse are its usual haunts, oftentimes at a place called Faygate, and it hath been seene within half a mile of Horsham; a wonder, no doubte, most terrible and noisome to the inhabitants therebouts. There is always in his track or path left a glutinous and slimie matter (as by a small similitude we may perceive in a snail’s) which is very corrupt and offensive to the scent…

This serpent (or dragon, some call it) is reputed to be nine feete, or rather more, in length, and shaped almost in the forme of an axletree of a cart; a quantitity of thickness in the middest, and somewhat smaller at both endes. The former part, which he shootes forth as a neck, is supposed to be an elle long; with a white ring, as it were, of scales about it. The scales along his back seem to be blackish, and so much as is discovered under his bellie, appeareth to be red; for I speak of no nearer description than of a reasonable ocular distance. For coming too nearer it, hath already beene too dearly paid for, as you shall heare hereafter.

It is likewise discovered to have large feete, but the eye may be there deceived; for some suppose that serpents have no feete… He rids away (as we call it) as fast as any man can run. He is of countenance very proud, and at the sight or hearing of men or cattell, will raise his neck upright, and seem to listen and looke about, with great arrogancy. There are likewise upon either side of him discovered, two great bunches so big as a large foote-ball, and (as some thinke) will in time grow to wings; but God, I hope, will (to defend the poor people in the neighbourhood) that he be destroyed before he grow so fledge.

He will cast his venome about four rodde [about 64 feet/19m] from him, as by woefull experience it was proved on the bodies of a man and woman coming that way, who afterwards were found dead, being poysoned and very much swelled, but not prayed upon. Likewise a man going to chase it and, as he imagined, to destroy it with two mastive dogs, as yet not knowing the great danger of it, his dogs were both killed, and he himself glad to return with haste to preserve his own life. Yet this is to be noted, that the dogs were not prayed upon, but slaine and left whole; for his food is thought to be, for the most part, in a conie-warren, which he much frequents.

The persons, whose names are hereunder printed, have seene this serpent, besides divers others, as the carrier of Horsam, who lieth at the White Horse in Southwark, and who can certifie the truth of all that has been here related.

John Steele
Christopher Holder
and a Widow Woman dwelling near Faygate.

The belief that St. Leonard’s Forest was a dragon lair persisted until the nineteenth century, when it was still believed that the area was the haunt of monstrous snakes. It is possible that the old belief was kept alive by gamekeepers, who had their own reasons for wanting people to keep away from the woods.

Many other places in Sussex were deemed to be dragon lairs. There was one on Bignor Hill, another at Fittleworth (reported in 1867), and it was said that there were serpents guarding treasure in a tunnel under the Iron Age camp at Cissbury.

There was also a water-monster at Lyminster, living in one of the knucker-holes on the coastal plain in front of the South Downs. These holes are artesian springs, fed by cold and crystal-clear water rising under pressure from the underlying chalk. There were knucker-holes at Worthing, Shoreham, Angmering, Lancing, and Lyminster. “Knucker” is derived from the Anglo-Saxon nicor, which means “dragon” or “water-serpent.”

The Lyminster Knucker-Hole, out on the bleak water-marshes of the Arun floodplain, was the lair of a notorious dragon. It rampaged around the countryside, carrying off cattle, sheep, and people and devouring them in its hideouts in the marshes. It was said he went swimming in the Arun River, “sticking his ugly face up against the windows in the shipyard when people were sitting having their tea.” The Knucker was an all-round pest. In the end the King of Sussex offered the hand of his daughter to anyone who could kill it. According to some, a passing knight killed the Knucker in heroic combat, married the princess, and settled in Lyminster. When he died, a gravestone was made for him. It is still there, with a cross superimposed on a herringbone pattern, which is believed to represent the ribs of the dragon, but there is no inscription.

But there is another version of what happened. According to this version, the victor was not a passing knight, but a local farm boy called Jim Pulk. Jim decided to bake the dragon a huge Sussex pie, poison it, and take it on a farm cart to the edge of the Knucker-Hole. He hid behind a hedge to see what happened. The Knucker came up out of the water, sniffed the pie and ate it, along with the cart and horses. Then the poison took effect and the dragon curled up and died. Jim came out and cut off the dragon’s head with a scythe. To celebrate his triumph, he went to the Six Bells Inn for a drink and fell down dead. The mysterious gravestone was Jim Pulk’s.

The story was retold with many variations. In some Jim Pulk was Jim Puttock. In some the story is brought up-to-date. This is the nature of a long-enduring oral tradition.

…off Jim goos, as bold as a lion. All the people followed him as far as the bridge [at Arundel], but they dursn’t goo no further, for there was old Knucker, lying just below Bill Dawse’s. Least, his head was, but his neck and body-parts lay all along up the hill, past the [railway] station, and he was tearing up the trees in Batworth Park with his tail.

And he sees this ‘ere tug [cart] a-coming, and he sings out, affable-like,
“How do, Man?”

“How do, Dragon,” says Jim.

“What you got there?” says Dragon, sniffing.

“Pudden,” says Jim.

“What be that?” says Dragon.

“Just you try,” says Jim.

He didn’t want no more telling.
Pudden, horses, cart, tug – they was
gone in a blink. Jim’d have gone too,
only he hung on to one of they trees
what blew down last year.

“Weren’t bad,” says Knucker, licking his lips.

“Like another?” says Jim…

I used to visit the Knucker-Hole as a boy. It was a lonely, wild place. Recently, after a long time away, I returned to find it completely inaccessible, ringed by a high chain-link fence. There was a door in the fence—a door with a letterbox…

Another monster is said to have once lived in a pool called Llyn yr Afanc on the Conwy River in North Wales. There are uncertainties about its form. Some say it was an enormous beaver, because the word afanc is sometimes used in Welsh dialects for “beaver.” Some say it was a sort of crocodile.

Llyn yr Afanc is a kind of whirlpool. Anything thrown in will go around and around and then be sucked down, but local people said it was the afanc that pulled down people or animals who fell into the Llyn. In the seventeenth century it was said that the afanc was drawn to a maiden, who persuaded it to put its head in her lap and go to sleep. As it slept, it was chained up and the chains attached to a team of oxen. But as they began to drag it away, the afanc woke up and tore away the maiden’s breast, which it was clutching with its claw. Some men joined in pulling with the oxen. They were disputing with each other about who pulled the hardest, when the afanc unexpectedly spoke:

“Had it not been for the oxen pulling,

The afanc would never have left the pool.”

The parish of Linton in Roxburghshire in Scotland is said to have been plagued by the Linton Worm. It was apparently a legless worm with poisonous breath that killed cattle and people. It was killed by Somerville of Lariston, who thrust a burning peat on the tip of a long lance down its throat. This neutralized its poisonous breath and burned out its entrails. The spiral ridges on Wormington Hill bear witness to the Linton Worm’s death throes.

Whether the worms of the Atlantic Celts were original Celtic creations or borrowings from Scandinavian lore is not known, but the worm-dragon is certainly a common type in Britain. A typical one is the Lambton Worm from Yorkshire. This grew to monstrous proportions after being pulled from the Wear River by the heir of Lambton, who was fishing on a Sunday, and thrown down a well. When the worm emerged from the well it had taken the form of an enormous lizard that ravaged the countryside. Sometimes it curled its huge, long body around a hill, or sometimes around a great rock in the river. If cut in half, it could rejoin itself.

Another worm-dragon is the Mester Stoorworm in Orkney, a sea-serpent of enormous size. When in its death throes, it screwed up its body to become the island of Iceland.

The Dragon of Loschy Hill was another self-joining dragon, like the Lambton Worm, and it was finally overcome with the help of the hero’s dog, who carried away the various pieces of the worm as they were chopped off so that they could not reunite. But the poisonous fumes of the dragon’s breath eventually proved fatal to both the hero and his dog.

Dragons and worms are curiously absent from surviving Irish traditions. In Irish tales, the foe is more often a giant (of which there are large numbers) or a supernatural hag. But there are some Irish dragons. More than one large pool derives its name from a worm or serpent that lived in it in the age of the heroes. Fion M’Cumhaill killed several of them. A hero from Munster killed a fearsome serpent in the Duffrey in County Wexford, and the pool where it lived is still called Loch-na-Piastha.

The Red Dragon of Wales appears on the Welsh national flag. The earliest recorded use of the dragon as a symbol for Wales comes from the History of the Britons written in the late eighth century by the monk Nennius. Tradition has it that it was the battle standard of King Arthur and other Celtic war leaders, so the Red Dragon would have been seen leading the Celts into battle. Henry Tudor flew the Red Dragon of Cadwaladr on a green and white field as his personal banner when he marched through Wales on his way to fight Richard III for the English throne at Bosworth in 1485. After the battle, in which Richard III was killed, the flag was ceremoniously carried to St. Paul’s cathedral to be blessed. The banner was to represent the House of Tudor. The Tudor monarchs were Welsh in origin, so it was natural for them to incorporate the Red Dragon of Wales into the royal coat of arms, where it still stands as one of the two supporters, the other being the Lion of England.

In the Mabinogion story Lludd and Llefelys, the Red Dragon does battle with an invading White Dragon. Its shrieks of pain cause women to miscarry, plants to wither, and animals to die. Lludd, the King of Britain, consults his wise brother, Llefelys, who advises him to dig a pit at the very center of Britain. He is to fill it with mead and cover it with a cloth. Lludd does as his brother tells him. The dragons drink the mead and fall asleep. Lludd is then able to bind them up in the cloth and keep them captive; he keeps them imprisoned inside Dinas Emrys, in Snowdonia.

Then Nennius takes up the story. The two dragons remain captive at Dinas Emrys for hundreds of years, until Vortigern attempts to build a castle there. By day King Vortigern builds. By night the castle walls and foundations are demolished again by unseen forces. Vortigern consults his wizards, who tell him to seek out a boy without a natural father and offer him as a sacrifice. The king finds such a boy—it is rumored that he is the young Merlin—who is said to be the wisest wizard who ever lived. When the boy discovers that he is to be put to death to solve the problem of the self-demolishing castle, he contradicts the advice that Vortigern has been given and tells him about the two dragons entombed deep inside the mountain.

Vortigern has the mountain excavated, freeing the two dragons. On their release into the air, they continue their unceasing fight. Finally the Red Dragon defeats the White Dragon. Then the boy explains what has happened. The White Dragon symbolizes the Saxons. The Red Dragon symbolizes the people of Vortigern: the Britons.

This vivid legend is nothing less than a Welsh foundation-myth. Vortigern’s Britons are the Welsh, and they remain undefeated by the Saxons: Wales remains a separate entity, while the Celtic kingdoms to the east are colonized and taken over by the Anglo-Saxons.

Geoffrey of Monmouth repeats the story in his History of the Kings of Britain. There, the Red Dragon is a different kind of symbol. It represents a prophecy of the coming of Arthur, who will save Britain from the Saxon onslaught.

The symbolic use of the Red Dragon still has the power to inspire, and the equal power to antagonize. In 1953 the Red Dragon badge of Henry VII was given an augmentation of honor, which consisted of a circular riband surrounding the Red Dragon and bearing the inscription (in Welsh) “The Red Dragon inspires action.” The British Prime Minister at the time, Winston Churchill, scoffed at it in a Cabinet Minute: “Odious design expressing nothing but spite, malice, ill-will and monstrosity. Words (Red Dragon takes the lead) are untrue and unduly flattering to [Aneurin] Bevan.” In spite of Churchill’s contempt, the badge was added to the arms of Cardiff, the Welsh capital, in 1956.

The Highland water-horse, or Each Uisce, is a dragon in all but name. This is a fierce and dangerous monster that haunts both open sea and Scottish lochs. It takes the form of a sleek and handsome horse that invites mortals to ride it; then it careers at headlong speed into the lake and devours its rider as it shapeshifts into a monster.

A widely told story involves seven little girls and one little boy out on a Sunday afternoon walk when they see a fine pony grazing beside a loch. One little girl mounts the pony, then another, until all seven of them are on the pony’s back. The little boy is more wary, as he notices that the pony gets longer to accommodate each additional child and senses that all is not well. He runs off and hides among some rocks away from the loch. The horse turns and sees him. “Come on, little scabby-head! Get on my back!” The boy will not go near the pony, so the pony rushes toward him, still carrying the little girls, who are now stuck fast to his back. The boy dodges among the rocks and the pony is unable to catch him. In the end, the water-horse gives up trying to catch the boy and plunges into the loch. The next day the livers of the seven little girls are washed up on the lakeshore.

ETERNITY KNOT

A knotwork design confined within a circle, or a circular interlace. Many designs, ancient and modern, conform to this specification, though not necessarily with any specific symbolism. To an extent, in modern times the symbolic value of designs has been driven forward by commercial considerations. Eternity symbols in particular can be used to promote the sale of jewelry and tattoos.

EXAGGERATION

(ENLARGEMENT)

One way of taking objects from the everyday world and transporting them to the Otherworld was to make them unrealistically large. This might apply to a whole object or just a part of it. Making an image of an animal, otherwise in true proportions, and giving it abnormally large horns was a way of transforming it into something Otherworldly.

The Cerne Giant in Dorset is well-known for his very large phallus, and the exaggeration has often been seen as proof that the figure was made as a fertility figure, but in this we have been misled. It was only during a scouring as recently as 1909 that the phallus was lengthened—before that it was in perfect proportion with the rest of the figure. This may have been done as a joke by the laborers who were given the job of cleaning the figure, but it is more likely to have been a mistake. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries there was a ring representing the Giant’s navel immediately above the phallus. Overgrown with grass, these two features could easily have been joined by mistake. Either way, the present head of the phallus is exactly where the navel was until 1909. But there are genuine examples of Celtic phallic exaggeration, such as the bronze relief of a naked man found at Woodeaton in Oxfordshire.

Another common form of exaggeration was repeating an image, especially in triplicate (see Miniaturization, Rule of Three; Places: Cerne Abbas).

GIANT

Giants and ogres are an integral part of later Celtic legend (see Myths: Comorre the Cursed, Morven, the Prop of Brittany, Tom and the Giant). Some of the giants, such as the colossal Bran the Blessed, clearly were once gods. Bran was so big that no house could contain him, and so big that he was able to wade across the Irish Sea from Wales to Ireland. He was enormously strong, but he was benign. His decapitated head chatted amiably and brought a blessing wherever it was carried; it protected Britain from invaders so long as it was safely lodged in London (see Myths: Branwen).

The huge hill figure depicting the Cerne Giant was originally intended as an icon of the Iron Age protector god of Dorset, though he has been interpreted subsequently in all sorts of different ways (see Cerne Abbas).

Aggressive, short-tempered giants are stock characters in medieval storytelling. The Giant of Grabbist was a stone-throwing giant, but he was also actively benevolent. He once lifted a boat that was in difficulties at sea and set it down safely in harbor. The Giant of Grabbist is slightly comical, and as the storytelling tradition developed, giants became steadily more grotesque and foolish. Increasingly, they became figures of fun.

The Giant of Carn Galva in Cornwall was a kindly giant. He was more playful than warlike. Giants were responsible for placing rocking-stones (“logan-stones”) on top of the granite tors of the English West Country. The Carn Galva Giant put in place the rocking-stone on the westernmost hill-top, so that he could rock himself to sleep as he watched the sun sink into the sea in the west. Nearby is a pile of roughly cube-shaped boulders that the giant used to build up and then kick down again as a pastime, like a bored child playing with building blocks. His main occupation was to protect the people of Morvah and Zennor from attack by the Titans who lived on Lelant Hills. The Giant of Carn Galva never killed any of the Morvah people except one, and that was by accident, in play.

The giant was fond of a young man from Choon, who used to walk up to the hilltop occasionally, just to see how the giant was getting on, to cheer him up and play a game of bob to pass the time. One afternoon, the giant was so pleased with the game they had played that when the young man from Choon threw down his quoit ready to go home, the giant tapped him good-naturedly on the shoulder with the tips of his fingers. “Be sure to come again tomorrow, son, and then we’ll have another good game!”

But the young man dropped dead at his feet—the giant had broken his skull with his gentle tap. When the giant realized his young friend was dead, he cradled his body in his arms and sat down on the big, square rock at the foot of the hill, rocking himself to and fro. He wailed and cried louder than the noise of the breakers on the cliffs. “Oh, why didn’t they make the shell of your noddle stronger? It’s as soft as a piecrust and made too thin by half! And how shall I pass the time without you here to play bob with me, and hide-and-seek?” The giant pined away for seven years before he died of a broken heart.

The landscape detail included in stories such as this one help to explain how the stories evolved and why they persisted. They gave people an explanation of strangely shaped landforms that otherwise were a total mystery to them.

At Peel Castle on the Isle of Man is the legendary grave of the first king of Eubonia, the ancient name of the island. It is 30 feet (9m) long.

THE GRAIL QUEST

The magic cup is a common element in Celtic folk-tales. In Finn MacCoul and the Bent Grey Lad, the hero is sent off to look for the “quadrangular cup of the Fenians,” which the King of Lochlann has stolen. The cup has supernatural qualities. Any drink you could wish for may be drunk from it. This is similar to the magic cup given to Huon of Bordeaux by King Oberon.

In another Irish tale, there is a cup that can cure the dumb. The enamel-decorated glass tumbler known as the Luck of Edenhall brings good luck, but if the cup is broken, the luck runs out. In a similar way, the family that possesses and looks after the cup of Ballafletcher on the Isle of Man may expect good luck, prosperity, and peace; but if the cup is damaged there are serious consequences.

The Holy Grail legend is the daughter of two parents and four grandparents. The mother is a Christian legend, and the father is a Celtic myth. There are two Christian origins for the cup. It may be the sacred cup from which Jesus drank at the Last Supper, or it may be the one used to catch the blood that ran from his wounds at the Crucifixion; either way, it is a sacred cup intimately associated with the last hours in the life of Jesus. There are, symmetrically, two Celtic origins. One is the magic cauldron of Celtic gods: a cauldron that is never empty and keeps everyone replete. The other is the magic chalice that gives spiritual power and kingly authority.

Invariably, when people talk about the Holy Grail as a physical object, they mean the cup associated with Jesus. But in medieval storytelling, somehow all four of these ideas come indeterminately stirred together to produce a misty apparition, an Otherworldly chalice that can only be seen under certain favorable conditions, and then only by the pure and the deserving.

It is said that an incomplete wooden cup, called the Nanteos Cup, and preserved in private ownership in Wales, represents the actual cup described in Christian legend.

This cup, said to be made of olivewood, has its own provenance story, which some may believe and some may not. Robert de Boron’s Joseph of Arimathea describes Joseph as bringing the cup to Britain. It arrived at Glastonbury, where it went into the care of the monks of Glastonbury Abbey. But then much depends on whether you believe the other stories that are told about Glastonbury. After the Dissolution, some of the monks from Glastonbury took refuge in Strata Florida Abbey near Tregaron in Ceredigion. When that abbey closed, it is said that the cup was left in the care of the Stedman family, the local landowners, and subsequently passed through marriage to the Powells of Nanteos Mansion near Aberystwyth.

The Nanteos Cup is thought by experts to be a medieval mazer bowl. It resided for many years at Nanteos Mansion, but went with the last member of the Powell family when they moved out in the 1950s. Two independent examinations of the cup have shown that it is made of wych elm, not olivewood, and that it probably dates from about 1400.

The story of the Nanteos Cup is attractive, but unsupported by any evidence. The Grail seems to remain elusive, just out of reach. That was the nature of the legendary Grail too.

The Grail legends of the Arthurian romances represent something very deep-seated in Celtic thought: the dangerous and eventful journey, the adventure, and the quest. The knights of King Arthur are striving to find the Holy Grail in exactly the same way that Everyman in medieval Christian Europe was supposed to be striving to find his own personal salvation.

So the Grail becomes a symbol not just of pure spirit, but the purest spirit, and the quest for it becomes the quest for spiritual wholeness, the quest for a personal salvation.

THE GREEN MAN

A sculpture or drawing of a face surrounded by leaves or even made from leaves. Some Green Man faces have leaves for hair and leaves for a beard. The face is almost always male. Sometimes branches or vines sprout from the mouth or nostrils, and the shoots may bear flowers or fruit. The Green Man is mainly found as an architectural ornament on churches.

The earliest known example of a Green Man image with foliage coming from its mouth dates from France in about AD 400. There are earlier Green Man images than this, though. One has been found on an Irish stone carving dating from 300 BC. Gods wearing leafy crowns are shown in Iron Age carvings. One of the local Romano-Celtic gods in Gaul, Erriapus, is shown as a head emerging out of a mass of foliage.

Leaves were themselves religious cult objects. Leaves made of bronze or precious metal were left as offerings to the gods.

The Green Man is not an exclusively Celtic image. It occurs in other cultures, but it was enthusiastically adopted by the Celts for its rich symbolic value.

Some of the cleverest carvings seem at first sight to be only foliage; it is only after a moment or two that the foliage resolves into a human face. The image is that of a pagan nature-spirit: the wood-wose, or the wild man of the woods.

There are many variations and the Green Man is found in many different cultures. The image is clearly a vegetation deity and a symbol of rebirth and renewal every spring.

Whether the Green Man can be seen as a specific part of the Celtic belief system is hard to say. Certainly the mythological beliefs regarding him continued alongside medieval Christianity, and it is striking how often this unmistakably pagan image appears in churches, abbeys, and cathedrals. It may be that the creation of Green Man images went on alongside the pre-Christian pagan belief system too. The Green Man almost seems to represent a belief system in itself, a belief in the self-renewal of vegetation that transcends religion.

At the same time, there were several Celtic nature gods who had much in common with the Green Man. It is also significant that one Celtic god has a name that means “The Green Man” in both Latin and Celtic: Viridios.

The Green Man was transformed into a folk-dancing character in Jack in the Green. Ancient tree worship entailed venerating the tree itself. From there it was a short step to nominating a young man or young woman to stand in for the tree. Usually, some sort of light wicker frame was carried, slung from the shoulders, and the frame covered with leaves and small branches—the wicker cage ritual again, though this time without a death at its climax (see Religion: Wicker Giant). In this way the tree, now The Tree, was mobilized and could take part in dances and processions—be directly engaged in the festivities to celebrate the arrival of summer. These were the typical activities of May Morning. The Maypole dancing was a similar transformation of the act of dancing a ring dance around a tree; in Maypole dancing, the pole stands in for the tree. And these customs still continue in England (see Religion: Beltane).

On May Morning, one dancer from a Morris team dresses entirely in branches and leaves and, as Jack in the Green or The Tree, he whirls about, leading the Morris Men through the streets, deciding the route and conducting the dance. On May Morning 1967, I was Jack in the Green for the Oxford University Morris Men—an animated Green Man. The nature symbolism is obvious. Jack represents the new foliage of early summer: the ritual is a greeting to summer itself and the promise it brings.

After the Middle Ages, the Green Man was given a new lease of life as a decorative image, in stone, stained glass, and manuscripts, and on bookplates. A dramatic, modern 40-foot (12m) tall full-figure version of the Green Man by sculptor Toin Adams can be seen at the Custard Factory in Birmingham, England.

The self-renewing woodland spirit nature of the Green Man was an idea that was repeatedly transformed. We can see it in figures as different from one another as Peter Pan, Robin Hood, Father Christmas, and the Green Knight.

HARE

All over Wales hares were regarded as heralds of death. There was a case in North Wales where a woman knew, before anyone had told her, that a certain person had died. The local clergyman asked her how she knew and she replied, “I know because I saw a hare come from towards his house and cross over the road before me.” She evidently believed the hare was the dead man.

In Wales there was a tradition that witches could turn themselves into hares (see Shapeshifting, Witchcraft). If a hare made an unexpected escape from the hounds, a huntsman might send his servants to see if some old woman, suspected of being a witch, had been out that morning.

It was also believed that witches could change other people into animals. An instance was quoted by Elias Owen, in his book Welsh Folklore, of such a transformation in Cardiganshire, where a man was turned into a hare by a witch.

There is speculation that the Druids used hares for prophecy, perhaps deliberately catching and then releasing them in order to watch exactly how and where they ran and then prophesying accordingly.

HAZEL

Hazel is the tree of knowledge. Hazelnuts are believed to carry great wisdom within them. In Druidic lore, the hazel is connected to the Salmon of Wisdom, which was thought to have acquired its knowledge by eating magic hazelnuts.

Hazel trees favor damp places. The tree’s association with water (it is thought to “choose” to live near water) is the reason why hazel twigs are used for dowsing water. The hazel itself is thought to know where underground water lies.

HEAD

The head features very prominently in Celtic religious art. It is a powerful symbol, representing the self, the center of being, and the most important part of the human body.

One peculiarity of the Celtic obsession with heads is the association of heads with water, and with spring-cults and well-cults (see Religion: Holy Wells, Sacred Springs). Several votive offerings at the Source de la Seine sanctuary depicted heads. In first-century London, heads were deposited in a well. The same connection between severed heads and water crops up in folk-tales. The water connection may be linked to the fundamental idea of regeneration: the belief that, somehow, immersion in water might bring a dead head back to life in the same way that it might restore a sick limb to health. The severed head may be a short-hand statement for death itself, in which case the association with water is a simple dualistic statement: head = death, and water = life, and birth, rebirth.

The Pfalzfeld pillar, carved in about 500 BC, has images of human heads on each of its four sides near the base. Sometimes what is shown is very specifically a display of severed human heads, in imitation of an actual practice of headhunting and the real-life display of heads as battle trophies. This was separate from the practice of representing gods by depicting their heads alone.

HOLY GRAIL

See The Grail Quest.

HORSE

The horse was a cult animal in Europe as far back as the Bronze Age. Rock art in Scandinavia shows horses with sun wheels and boats. The horse and the sun-disk were major symbols in the Urnfield culture, and this Bronze Age association continued into the Iron Age; the two symbols often occur together on Iron Age coins.

By the middle of the Iron Age, horses were ridden as well as being used for pulling carts and chariots. The horse acquired great prestige value by association with its use as a steed by the warrior aristocracy—a special status that went beyond their practical usefulness. This was evident at the terrible siege of Alesia by the Roman army. The Gaulish chief Vercingetorix finally sent away his horses and surrendered to insure their safety; he was to lose his life, but his horses were to be saved. This gesture may have entailed something beyond a sentimental feeling for favorite animals; the horses may have symbolized his kingship. Vercingetorix might be about to surrender to Julius Caesar and be taken off to Rome in chains, but the kingship of his tribe, the Arverni, would go on.

The horse’s central place in Celtic warrior society ensured its central place as a religious symbol. Horse figurines were commonly left as offerings in Britain and Gaul; to give one example, a small bronze horse was left as a votive offering at Coventina’s Well, near Carrawburgh, on Hadrian’s Wall.

The image of a horseman, a mounted god, appears in Romano-Celtic religious art, especially in Britain, in the lands of the Catuvellauni and Coritani, and related to a local war-god cult.

The horse was closely associated with the goddess Epona, who was the most conspicuous horse deity (see Places: Uffington White Horse; Religion: Coventina, Epona).

ICHTHYS WHEEL

See Wheel.

ISLES OF THE BLESSED

These islands were the mythic location of the Otherworld. In the adventures of Bran, Mael Duin, and Brendan, they featured as mysterious islands far out in the Atlantic: a vast sea subject to constant change.

The islands were fantastic in every possible way. One island was a gigantic foot sticking up out of the ocean, with an island on top and a door at its base. Another was a vast, four-sided, silver pillar with a gold mesh hanging from the top down into the sea below. Another was an island with a strange beast whirling around its outer wall and turning itself inside its own skin.

JUPITER COLUMN

See Sky Horseman.

KNOT

A characteristic design, one that became conspicuous in Celtic art from about AD 700 onward.

Knotwork is made of a single continuous labyrinthine line that winds and weaves all around and through the design, without a beginning, and without an end. It symbolizes eternity. Knotwork is often used in illuminated manuscripts to fill corners or to make decorative borders around the edge of a page of text.

The never-ending interlacing line was also carved in stone. It forms an elaborate decoration on the face of the Celtic cross at Carew in Pembrokeshire.

The elaborate interlace pattern was still in use as late as the twelfth century, which is when the remarkable stone font of St. Michael’s church, Castle Frome, Herefordshire, was carved. This has, around its rim, three triple never-ending lines that interweave regularly, plaiting just like basketwork—and making the magic Celtic three times three (see Rule of Three). Lower down, on the waist of the font, is another interlace pattern, this time a single never-ending path that weaves about far more randomly. It seems almost to look back to the random wanderings of the labyrinth lines on Neolithic tombs. In a Christian church, the community is carrying on with its old ideas just as before. Here, as in so many aspects of Celtic culture, there is long continuity of practice and thought through deep time.

LABYRINTH

Labyrinths are not unique to the Celts. They occur early on in south-eastern Europe, in the Aegean region, with the building of the Knossos labyrinth in about 1900 BC. This famously mazelike building was commemorated, long after it had fallen into ruins, by a maze symbol stamped on the coins of the classical city of Knossos, which was built right next to the remains of the Bronze Age labyrinth.

In the Bronze Age, the labyrinth was literally mazelike, with many different possible routes. In later times, the design was stricter, allowing only one route in, and one route out. A typical labyrinth design is compact, while allowing the longest possible linear path in from the outside to the center.

Labyrinths constantly reappear in different forms at different stages in the evolution of Celtic culture, and some of them are earlier than the Minoan labyrinths. The labyrinth as an idea is closely related to the knot: the line that winds all around a design. The difference is that in a knotwork design the line has no beginning and no end, while in a labyrinth there is, usually, a starting-point and a goal.

Both symbolize journeys. This might be a particular journey or adventure, or the overall journey of life itself. Labyrinths therefore form a visual counterpart to the epic folk-tale, which often consists of a long and convoluted journey with episodes that repeat and double back on themselves. They may symbolize a journey of self-discovery too, a journey in to the center of the self and out again, and in this way the ancient symbol emerges as a Jungian archetype: a tool for self-exploration and self-healing.

The path representing a long and winding journey makes its first appearance in the Celtic west in the Neolithic passage grave art seen at Gavrinis in Brittany, Newgrange in Ireland, and Bryn Celli Ddu in Wales. These rock-cut mazes dating from 3,500–3,000 BC are asymmetrical.

Later, in the Bronze Age, from around 2000 BC onward, nearly symmetrical labyrinths appear. The classic design, similar to the Knossos maze but circular instead of square, was chipped onto the living rock near Tintagel.

These ancient formal designs themselves have ancestors. It is possible to see early forerunners of the labyrinth idea in the cup-and-ring marks seen on many naturally outcropping slabs of rock, especially in northern Britain. The marks at Old Bewick in Northumberland consist of concentric circles that are entered by winding paths with a cup at each end.

Labyrinths are also found among the Val Camonica rock carvings in northern Italy.

In the post-Roman, early medieval Celtic world, some knotwork designs were developed to turn them into labyrinths. Squared off, these could become decorative patterns for floor-tiles.

In the highest developments of Celtic art, reached in the early Middle Ages, and in purely decorative art again in the nineteenth century, knotwork and labyrinth converged. By this stage, Celtic, Anglo-Saxon, and Norse interlace elements became impossible to distinguish; the arts and crafts of the different cultures spilled over into each other.

Labyrinths were adopted by the Christian Church, and occasionally large labyrinth pavements were laid out in tiles on church floors. The most spectacular one is in Chartres cathedral. It is based on a design made of 11 concentric circles and its path is exactly 666 feet (203m) long. This may be a joke on the part of the designer, as the number 666 is usually regarded as being associated with the Devil, the Great Beast, though apologists argue that it is a sacred number. The Chartres labyrinth has a six-petaled flower, hiding the Seal of Solomon. Curiously, the cathedral-builders in Britain did not include labyrinths in their designs, though there were plenty of mazes available in Britain that could have served as models.

The turf maze is a British invention. Sometimes they are called Troy Towns (Draytons) or the Walls of Troy or, in Wales, Caerdroia, the City of Troy. Sometimes they are called Julian’s Bower, apparently after the Julius who was the son of Trojan Aeneas and burgh meaning town. The insistent connection with Troy is hard to explain. There was no legend of a labyrinth at Troy, as there was at Knossos. Another name given to the turf maze is Shepherd’s Race, which is self-explanatory.

One of the biggest turf mazes is the one on the common at Saffron Walden in Essex. It is circular, 140 feet (43m) across and probably made in the fairly recent past. The maze at Wing in Rutland is apparently older; it stands close to an ancient burial mound. The very irregular turf maze at Pimperne in Dorset, Troy Town, was also fairly old. In 1686 John Aubrey described it as “much used by the young people on Holydaies and by ye School-boies.” Unfortunately it was plowed up and destroyed in 1730.

Julian’s Bower at Alkborough in Lincolnshire and Shepherd’s Race at Boughton Green in Northamptonshire were classic, symmetrical, circular mazes, and both 40 feet (12m) in diameter.

In the early nineteenth century, the people of Alkborough played games at Julian’s Bower on May Eve. One villager who was a youth at the time said that he had “an indefinite persuasion of something unseen and unknown co-operating with them” as they ran backward and forward along the paths to reach the center and then retraced their steps to get out again.

The Mizmaze is a nearly lost turf maze in Dorset; perhaps significantly, perhaps not, it lies exactly halfway between two great Iron Age hill towns of Maiden Castle and South Cadbury. It could be ancient, but it seems more likely to be medieval. Over the last 200 years, which was ironically a period of awakening antiquarian and archeological interest, the local people have stood by and watched the Mizmaze grow over and gradually disappear from view. John Hutchins, writing about the history of Dorset in the eighteenth century, described it as “a maze of circular form, about 30 paces in diameter, surrounded by a bank and ditch. The banks of which it is composed are set almost close together, and are somewhat more than one foot in width and about half a foot in height.”

A later edition of Hutchins’s History of Dorset, produced in the early nineteenth century, added:

Heretofore it was the custom for the young men of the village to scour out the trenches and pare the banks once in six or seven years, and the day appropriated for the purpose was passed in rustic merriment and festivity. But of late years, either through want of encouragement from the principal inhabitants, or from a less reverence for a curious piece of antiquity, this salutary work has been neglected, and there is at present great danger that, in the lapse of a few years, the traces of the several trenches or divisions will no longer be discernible, particularly in the centre, where the circle being shorter, and consequently more susceptible of injury, the banks have been trodden down by the numerous cattle that resort to the spot to enjoy the cool breeze in summer. In the year 1800 this common was inclosed, and the part on which the maze was formed, consisting of a small field, being in the possession of an individual who had taken no care to preserve this work of antiquity, it was almost obliterated.

Hutchins’s fears were fully justified. Only the hexagonal and feebly developed enclosing earthwork survives today. The Mizmaze itself has gone.

LEAVES

See The Green Man.

MAGIC

Folk-tales and legends are wreathed in magic, as if it is an integral part of the Celtic mindset. It is, even so, difficult to explore and examine ancient magic because those who practised it invariably did so in secret. The Druids made a point of not writing things down precisely in order to prevent their knowledge from falling into the wrong hands, or the wrong minds. Lewis Spence tired of searching for a book about Celtic magic, and so in frustration wrote one himself. His impression was that “to no race was it given to cultivate a higher or keener sense of spiritual vision or of the fantastically remote than to the Celtic.” For evidence, he looked to medieval Celtic literature, but also to comments made by classical authors. Pliny said that the Britons performed “such ceremonies that it might seem possible that she [Britain] taught magic to the Persians.” Diodorus Siculus believed that Pythagoras received his mystical philosophy from the Celtic priests of Gaul.

From the folk-tales, we can tell that Celtic wizards were believed to be able to shapeshift. An Irish magus, Fer Fidail, was able to abduct a girl by transforming himself into a woman. Another was able to deceive Cú Chulainn, the Irish Achilles, by adopting the form of the Lady Niamh. In the tale The Children of Lir, the three children of the god Lir are changed into swans by their stepmother Aeife.

In the Scottish Highlands there are several tales associated with enchantresses who take the form of deer. Some tales entail sex-shifting as well as shapeshifting, so that maidens are transformed into stags. One transformation is particularly common: a hideous hag can be released from her enchantment only by having sex with a self-denying hero. In one Scottish tale, the hero, Diarmid, meets a hag who begs him for shelter and “a share of his couch.” When he agrees to this (initially) distasteful task, she is transformed into a young woman of surpassing beauty.

As well as shapeshifting, magicians are alleged to be able to see things a long way off, raise wind, night, snow, or fire, and induce forgetfulness with a mysterious elixir. They could cause streams to dry up and annihilate time. They could cause confusion by throwing a mantle of fog over a landscape. The spoken word of magic, the spell, was known among Gaelic-speakers as Bricht.

The Tuatha dé Danann are surrounded by many magical incidents. They lived for a time in the north of Europe, in four enchanted cities—Falias, Glorias, Finias, and Murias—where four celebrated magicians—Moirfhais, Erus, Arias, and Semias—presided. From the four cities they took ship for northern Britain and Ireland, taking with them four of the most powerful magic talismans. One was the Lia Fáil, a crowning-stone that at a coronation roared its approval beneath the feet of a king. The second and third were the sword and spear of Lugh. The fourth was the Daghda’s cauldron. All of these elements reappear in the (later) stories about the quest for the Holy Grail, which draws on ancient archetypes (see The Grail Quest). It is interesting that in this episode the rule of four prevails, instead of the more usual rule of three.

Celtic magicians were not above exacting revenge by the use of magic. It is said that King Cormac, who lived in Ireland in the second century AD, attempted to suppress magicians. In retaliation, a magician called Maelcen conjured up an evil spirit who placed a fishbone crossways in the king’s throat and choked him to death.

Ireland seems to have had a class of sorcerer that was unconnected with the Druids. The wizard Calatin was conspicuous in Irish magical legend. He had 27 monstrous sons. The number is significant: 3 x 3 x 3. There were several fearsome females in the family too. The Clan Calatin went armed with poisoned spears that never failed to reach their mark. In the end Calatin was killed by Cú Chulainn, but Queen Medb sent Calatin’s three daughters first to Scotland, then to Babylon, to be educated in magic. When they returned they were expert in every kind of sorcery and Medbh kept them at her side until she could let them loose upon Cú Chulainn, their father’s murderer.

The fourteenth-century Welsh poet Dafydd ap Gwilym states that the three most famous sorcerers in Britain were Menw, Eiddeilic the Dwarf, and Math the monarch. Math appears in the Mabinogion tale of Math, Son of Mathonwy. The Welsh Triads mention Gwydion and Uther Pendragon as magicians, as well as Rhuddlwm the Dwarf.

The magician’s magic wand is a recurring feature in Celtic tales. Druids, we are told, regularly carried staffs made from yew, hawthorn, or rowan wood. In the story of Diarmid and Grainne, a sorcerer called Reachtaire strikes his son with a magic wand, turning him into a “cropped pig, with neither ears nor tail.” Wands could also bear witness to the truth. In a tale in the Mabinogion, there is a question as to whether the Lady Arianrhod is a virgin or not. Math insists that she step over his wand. When she does, she promptly gives birth to a child: the infant Lleu Llaw Gyffes. Covered in confusion, Arianrhod tries to leave the room, but before she can she produces another child: Dylan, later to become a sea god. In Yorkshire there is a saying that “if a girl strides over a broom-handle she will be a mother before she is a wife.” It is possible that this peculiar saying has its roots in a pre-Anglo-Saxon folk-tale: a version of the Arianrhod story.

Not quite a magic wand, and not quite a natural branch, but something in between: the magic silver branch. This is used by the gods to lure certain favored mortals toward the Otherworld. The silver branch might almost be a symbol for the Celtic belief system, which depends on the connection between the everyday world and the Otherworld. It is cut from a magic apple tree and produces magic music that is impossible to resist. The apples the branch produces supply the pilgrim with both food and drink while he or she stays in the Land of the Gods. The tree from which the branch is cut grows at the door of the Court in the Plain of Honey.

Cormac MacAirt, High King of Ireland, was walking near his palace one day when he saw a youth holding a branch with nine golden apples hanging on it. The youth shook the branch and the apples made sweet mystical music. Anyone who heard it forgot their sorrows—it had the property of lulling people into a magic forgetfulness. Cormac asked to buy it, and was dismayed when the youth told him the price: his wife and children. Nevertheless, he agreed. Cormac’s wife and children were horrified to hear that they had been sold, but when Cormac shook the silver branch they forgot what had happened and went off happily with the youth.

A year went by and Cormac wanted to see his wife and children again. He set off to find them. He was enveloped in a magic cloud, where he encountered a divine couple; he knew them to be Manannán, the sea god, and his wife. Cormac saw his wife and children come into the hall and then Manannán admitted that he was the youth who had taken them away. Cormac and his family slept that night in Manannán’s house. When they woke up next morning, they found themselves back in their own hall at Tara, with the silver branch beside them.

The silver branch is as important an idea in Gaelic legend as the golden bough is in classical myth: a passport to the Land of the Gods.

Manannán is himself portrayed as a magician. He travels in a magic boat made of copper: Wave-sweeper.

The medieval tale of Math, Son of Mathonwy tells the magical story of the faithless flower-maiden Blodeuwedd (see Myth: The Four Branches of the Mabinogi). Some scholars believe the original mythic tale came from Irish sources and was brought to Wales by Irish migrants.

In the Mabinogion, Math is presented as a magician, a master of omens, who passes his arcane gifts to his nephew Gwydion, and who in turn becomes a master of illusion. Cú Chulainn was schooled by the Druid Cathbad, who made him “skilled in all that was excellent in visions.”

Celtic tales are incredibly rich in magical detail, to a point where it is clear that the ancient Celtic way of life must have been saturated in it. Some of it survives in minor beliefs that were perhaps only half-believed: the little quirks of human behavior that we call superstitions.

Some of these superstitions are very long-lived. Like Julius Caesar, Strabo described the sacrifice of men to the gods by burning them to death. In a little-noticed aside, he added, “When there is a large yield [of victims for burning] there is forthcoming a large yield from the land as well, as they [the Celts] think.” So the burning of human victims was believed to induce a good harvest. One-and-a-half millennia later, in October 1555, Bishop Hugh Latimer was burned to death in an equally terrible kind of human sacrifice in front of Balliol College, Oxford. Onlookers in the crowd were heard to say it was a pity it had not happened earlier in the year, as then it might have saved the crops. It was the same idea, the same superstition.

My grandparents were country people who lived in a timber-framed cottage in Kent. My grandfather was a farm laborer and my grandmother used to take in laundry for one of the big houses nearby. They were down-to-earth people, but their lives ran according to a host of small customs. One day I watched my grandmother unaccountably opening an umbrella indoors. My grandfather snapped, “Bad luck to put up an umbrella in the house.” My grandmother snapped back, “Pah! Superstitious twaddle! It’s only bad luck if you stick it over your head.”

MEMORY

Long memories are characteristic of Celtic communities. The Druids leaned totally on memory. They had to devote themselves to great efforts of learning. Julius Caesar noted that the Druids “are said to learn by heart a great number of verses.” They went so far as to spurn writing in order to intensify their dependence on memory. In Druidry there is a deep and abiding connection between memory and nature. The Earth itself is regarded as remembering everything; it is a witness to history, in a way that we cannot fully appreciate.

On the outskirts of the village of Trellech in Gwent (South Wales) there is a row of three standing stones, erected in the Bronze Age. They stand in a line 40 feet (12m) long, two leaning slightly and one leaning rather more. They are also graded, with the shortest stone in the north-east and the tallest in the south-west, which is the direction of the midwinter sunset.

The three stones are remembered in the name of the village, which comes from tri-llech, meaning “three stones”—these particular three stones. They are also memorialized in the sundial made in 1689, which is by the church door; the three stones are carved in low relief, with their heights in feet correctly inscribed on them: 8, 10, 14. Above them is written MAJOR SAXIS, “the great stones.” The mysterious old stones were regarded as an important part of the village identity.

As the stones were still there in the landscape, no great feat of memory was involved, but on the base of the memorial something else was inscribed: HIC FUIT VICTOR HARALDAS, “Here Harold was conqueror.” This was a distant memory of Harold Godwinsson’s little-known campaigns there in 1055 and 1056 and final victory in 1063. It is surprising to find a 600-year-old military victory remembered in a village.

MERMAID

The characteristics of the mermaid were defined in antiquity and have remained unchanged to the present day. She is a beautiful maiden from the waist upward, but with the tail of a fish. She carries a comb and a mirror and is to be seen languidly and vainly combing her long hair and singing with irresistible sweetness on a rock on the seashore, where she lures men to their death.

The appearance of mermaids is an omen of misfortune. In spite of their beauty, they are avid for men’s lives; they either drown or devour them.

In some of the early Celtic descriptions they are monsters, enormous in size. One sighting described a mermaid 160 feet (49m) long with hair 18 feet (5m) long and fingers 7 feet (2m) long. Her nose was 7 feet long (2m) too. These precise measurements were possible because her corpse was washed up by the sea. This is said to have happened in AD 887.

Mermaids are typically sea creatures, but they are not averse to freshwater and may swim up rivers and haunt freshwater lakes.

The young Laird of Lorntie in Forfarshire was returning home from hunting one evening, with a servant and two greyhounds. As he passed a lake about three miles south of Lorntie, closely hemmed in by woods, he heard a woman screaming. It sounded as if she was drowning. He spurred his horse to the lakeside, and saw a beautiful woman struggling in the water and shouting, “Help, help, Lorntie!”

He dismounted, rushed into the lake, and made to grasp her long, golden hair as she went under. Suddenly he was seized from behind by his servant and pulled out; the servant understood that this was a trick by a water-sprite.

The master was about to beat the servant, but the servant said, “Wait, Lorntie. Look! The howling woman was, God save us, no other than a mermaid.”

The laird instantly understood that his servant was right, and the mermaid herself rose half out of the water. “Lorntie, Lorntie, were it not for your man, I’d have had your heart’s blood fry in my pan.”

The Irish equivalent of mermaids are called merrow or the Murdhuacha. They are particularly feared because they make their appearance just before storms. But they are gentler than most mermaids, often falling in love with mortal fishermen. There are male merrows too, which are very ugly but amiable and good-natured, ready for a chat with anyone passing.

MERROW

See Mermaid.

MINIATURIZATION

(SHRINKAGE)

Miniaturization is a very ancient practice, going right back to the Neolithic period, and probably we should not see it as distinctly Celtic. It is even seen in ancient Egyptian tombs, where miniature agricultural tools were left so that food production could go on in the afterlife.

However, an important aspect of Celtic religion was taking objects, animals, or people from the everyday world and transporting them to the Otherworld, and one way of doing this was to change the scale. Things could be made unrealistically large or unrealistically small and each type of exaggeration took things into the Otherworld. So, miniaturizing objects made them sacred and sublime. The Celts made models of tools and weapons, and this made them appropriate as votive offerings. Miniature axes and spears were quite common.

MISTLETOE

A strong life symbol, because it is evergreen and bears fruit in the winter. Other evergreens with winter berries such as holly and ivy are also symbolic, and all three have remained highly symbolic as Christmas decorations. All three have their symbolic origins in pre-Christian solstice customs and beliefs, and are therefore all three “pagan plants,” but mistletoe in particular is singled out as being too pagan to hang inside a church.

Mistletoe still retains its strong pagan association, because of the classical description of the Druids and their interest in the plant. Why the Druids attached such great significance to it is not known, though it is possible to guess from some of the plant’s peculiarities. Apart from being evergreen and bearing fruit in winter, mistletoe does not grow on the ground but in the sky: it is a heaven-sent plant. It also perches on the oak tree, the most sacred and heavily symbolic tree as far as the Druids were concerned. They took their name from the Celtic name of the oak tree, duir. The oak is a symbolic door to the Otherworld.

The custom of kissing under the mistletoe is of unknown antiquity. It suggests that somehow mistletoe is associated with sex and fertility. The association of mistletoe with kissing is so well-established that the little “x” mark on the under side of the berry has become the written shorthand for kiss.

In some places in England it is considered unlucky to cut mistletoe at any time other than Christmas. Among its names was All-Heal, because it was thought to cure many different ailments. It was also thought to avert misfortune and even counteract poison.

MONUMENTAL COASTAL SCENERY

The Atlantic Celts inhabited—and still inhabit—a very distinctive landscape: a wild, rocky coastline with high and rugged cliffs. The coastline of Galicia is fretted by deep, wide sea inlets (rias) with steep, rocky slopes rising to uplands on each side. It is an intricate coast, with the rias creating numerous sheltered natural harbors. The Brittany coast is similar, with many branching inlets that are the remains of ancient river valleys drowned by a rising sea; the biggest of the Breton inlets is the Rade de Brest. In the English West Country, it is the same again, with more large branching inlets at Falmouth and Plymouth, and in Wales at Milford Haven. Further north, the inlets are drowned glacial valleys and the land rises very steeply on each side to mountains.

This is dramatic, sometimes melodramatic coastal scenery. In fine weather it is a coastline that encourages exploration, on foot or by sea. In stormy weather it looks like a setting for myth and adventure; it inspires, but in a different way. The interaction of the coast with the sea—the tides, the wind, and the changeable weather—is a continuous drama: one that demands our attention.

THE MURDHUACHA

See Mermaid.

NANTEOS CUP

See The Grail Quest.

NEVER-ENDING PATH

See Knot.

NUDITY

Iron Age Celts often went into battle naked. The famous Dying Gaul statue is a marble copy of the original bronze statue raised by Attalos I of Pergamon in the third century BC, after he successfully defeated the Celtic Galatians in Asia Minor. The warrior is stripped naked except for a torc round his neck. This powerful image is the most vivid testimony imaginable that Celtic warriors really did go into battle naked.

Various reasons have been suggested. The Roman historians who first saw this were evidently puzzled, and suggested practical reasons: clothing might hamper the warriors’ movement, or it might get caught by shrubs or brambles. The warriors were safer taking their clothes off. But nudity exposed the body to all kinds of injury, as well as to the rigors of variable weather conditions. It seems likely that the overriding reason was ritual, part of the fighting frenzy, to show that the warrior was offering his body to death.

Part of the undressing can be explained by a need to make an effective shield. There are many figurines showing naked warriors who have wound their cloaks around their left arms to make a cloak-shield. This has been found experimentally to be effective in absorbing the energy of a blow, and can even give protection against a sword blow (see Places: Cerne Abbas).

OAK

A sacred tree, the king of the forest, the oak was held in special regard. This was shared by the Germanic people of northern Europe: it was not exclusively a Celtic belief.

The oak formed a kind of magical trinity with the ash and the thorn. The Druids were held to regard the oak as a particularly sacred tree. Subsequently, it has been regarded as the dwelling-place of fairies:

Fairy folks

Are in old oaks.

Some oaks are haunted by sinister oakmen.

Winfrith (St. Boniface) was born in AD 680 in Devon, the son of Anglo-Saxon immigrants from mainland Europe. He entered the Church and seemed to be set on a life of scholarship and teaching, but decided to give this up in order to become a missionary. His idea was to return to his homeland, Saxony, and convert the pagans there to Christianity. His ambition was to create a continuous corridor of Christianity from Rome all the way to the North Sea. Near Geismar, in the heart of what is now Germany, he came across an oak tree that was venerated as Thor’s Oak. To the consternation of the oak’s pagan devotees, Winfrith took an ax to it, challenging Thor to stop him.

By chance—or was it a miracle?—a thunderstorm broke at that very moment and a bolt of lightning struck the tree, breaking it up and destroying it.

Because Thor had failed to protect his own tree, many of the pagans abandoned Thor and turned to Christ. Winfrith and his followers gathered up the boughs of the sacred tree and made an oratory out of them. It was a classic example of the conversion of a pagan religious center, as well as being a turning-point in the Christian conversion of Germany.

This happened in AD 723.

We can be sure that many tribes in central and western Europe similarly venerated oak trees.

OGHAM

The Ogham signs are alphabet characters. In neo-Celtic spirituality, these characters are said to symbolize different species of tree. The first letter of the Ogham alphabet, a horizontal stroke leading to the right from a vertical edge, is B, or Irish-Gaelic Beithe, Birch. The birch in turn represents beginning, renewal, and youth.

This is the complete system:

Ogham: Trees and their Symbolic Meaning

B    Beithe = Birch: beginning, renewal, youth

L    Luis = Rowan: protection, expression, connection

F    Fern = Alder: endurance, strength, passion

S    Sail = Willow: imagination, intuition, vision

H    Huath = Hawthorn: contradiction, consequence, relationships

D    Duir = Oak: strength, stability, nobility

T    Tinne = Holly: action, assertion, objectivity

C    Coll = Hazel: creativity, purity, honesty

Q    Quert = Apple: beauty, love, generosity

M    Muin = Vine: introspection, relaxation, depth

G    Gort = Ivy: determination, change, patience

NG  Ngetal = Reed: harmony, health, growth

STR  Straif = Blackthorn: discipline, control, perspective

R    Ruis = Elder: transition, evolution, continuation

A    Ailm = Fir: clarity, achievement, energy

O    Onn = Gorse: transmutation, resourcefulness, exposure

U    Ur = Heather: dreams, romance, feelings

E    Edad = Poplar or Aspen: victory, transformation, vision

I    dad = Yew: transference, passage, illusion

PHALLUS

A peculiar feature of Celtic religious imagery is the linking of the head and the phallus. The Celts venerated the human head, practised headhunting, and in their religious art often showed the human head on its own. The image was sometimes combined with the phallus as if to emphasize the connection of the human head with potency.

At Bremevaque, in south-western France, a Gaulish image was found roughly carved in stone. It shows a god with erect phallus, spear, snake, and swastika.

The phallic heads from Eype in Dorset and Broadway in Worcestershire were probably intended to represent local gods, as well as incorporating other ideas.

War gods were depicted naked, because warriors often fought naked (see Nudity). But they were also often depicted with erect phalluses. One suggested reason is that this was to demonstrate their virility, and by implication strength. There may have been a secondary intention to associate the war god with fertility and prosperity. A god who could ensure victory in battle would bring general prosperity to a tribe; a god who enabled cattle-rustlers to win skirmishes also enabled the tribe to acquire more cattle.

The phallus was an image that recurred, sometimes in forms that are less than obvious. The Pillar of Eliseg in Wales bears an inscription saying that it was raised by King Concenn of Powys to commemorate his great-grandfather. Concenn died in 854, yet the style of the pillar is Mercian-English and tenth or eleventh century rather than ninth, so there is something of an enigma even about its date. The columnar shape of the pillar, however, with a rimmed capital at the top and a flaring base, is phallic.

The Celts were fascinated by visual puzzles and riddles, and by shapeshifting, by things turning into other things. A remarkable stone phallic symbol found at Maryport shows a simple disk-shaped face carved into the ventral face of the erect phallus in such a way that the part of the glans remaining visible round the edge looks like two locks of hair. The Maryport Pillar or Serpent Stone, as it is known, is a clever piece of ambiguity.

This kind of visual pun is still to be seen in popular religious art; in tourist shops in the Mediterranean it is possible today to buy statuettes of the Virgin Mary which, when turned round, change into erect phalluses. It is a curious, instant switching between the sacred and the profane, and between the sublime and what today looks like a crude sexual joke. But perhaps putting these two faces of humanity side by side in this way is itself a statement of some weight about the nature of the human condition.

Perhaps the most blatant and explicit depiction is a pottery image made in the Nene Valley and probably intended for use by the Roman troops in Britain. A woman is bending forward and massaging a gigantic phallus while looking behind her and pointing at her own genitalia. A man is running toward her with a huge erection and having a premature ejaculation. But phallus images are rarely as explicitly sexual as this. The phallus is normally depicted as if it was religious icon its own right.

Other ambiguous phallic symbols include some of the Celtic crosses. A pillar at St. Buryan near Penzance in Cornwall is thought to be an ancient standing stone that has been Christianized by having its top shaped into a sun-wheel. Without the “limbs” of the cross extending outside the sun circle, the outline looks phallic—and of course the sun-wheel on its own could be a symbol of the Celtic god Taranis, and not a Christian symbol at all. The same applies to another Cornish cross: St. Piran’s Cross on Penhale Sands (see Exaggeration; Places: Cerne Abbas).

PURSE

Gods are sometimes shown holding a purse or moneybag, representing the worldly prosperity they can bring. The purse is a particular attribute of the Celtic god Mercury, who often has a purse in one hand and a caduceus or wand in the other. If Mercury is shown with a goat, the purse is frequently shown close to it, perhaps to emphasize that money comes from livestock. Sometimes goddesses carry purses, and the meaning is the same. In some images of couples, one partner carries the purse (implicitly for both), but sometimes they both carry purses, probably for emphasis.

The purse is often held, resting on one knee, if the god or goddess is seated. One statue of Rosmerta shows her holding the purse clasped to her breast, while a snake rests its head on the purse as if feeding from it (see Serpent).

The purse is often large, and always bulging with coins. A relief of Cernunnos shows him sitting cross-legged with a big bag of coins in his lap. Another image of Cernunnos shows the (possibly same) moneybag spilling a cascade of coins toward the greedy worshiper.

In some images the symbols seem to elide with one another. A snake feeds from a purse in one image, and from a dish in another. Some images clearly show the moneybag brimming with coins, and others show coins in a dish.

RAM-HORNED SNAKE

Snakes are a symbol of the Earth. The snake-limbed monsters on the Jupiter columns show that they belong to and represent the Earth (see Sky Horseman). Snakes are also believed to be guardians. In Irish tradition, Conall Cernach has to deal with a snake that guards his enemy’s fort. But seen from the enemy’s point of view, the snake is acting as a protector, and this protecting role is a major aspect of the snake. Snakes are protectors against sickness, against war, and against the terrors of death.

Adding the ram’s horn to the image of a snake takes the image out of the realm of the everyday. The image is mainly a Gaulish one, but there are some in Britain. The Gundestrup cauldron shows the snake as the nature-god Cernunnos’ companion on one plate. On another plate the ram-horned snake heads a procession. The snake is often associated with Cernunnos. In an image from Cirencester, the legs of the god appear to have turned into two snakes, whose heads rear up toward two purses near the god’s head. In a Gaulish image from Sommerécourt (Haute Marne), Cernunnos is accompanied by a goddess who is feeding a ram-horned snake from a basket resting on her knee; the god too has a snake. A wooden sculpture found at a Celtic township at Crêt Chatelard (Loire) shows Cernunnos squatting, with a ram-horned snake sliding down his arm.

There is even a ram-horned snake in the collection of Celtic rock carvings at Val Camonica. There is an image of stag-horned god with two torcs, and he is accompanied by a ram-horned snake.

The associations of the ram-horned snake show that it was a symbol of prosperity and plenty. Its presence with or even held by the god Cernunnos, a fertility image, confirms that it had a fertility role. The ram was a fertility symbol in the Mediterranean world, so the ram’s horns may have been a borrowing from the Mediterranean.

One significant image comes from Lypiatt Park in Gloucestershire, where a ram-horned snake coils itself around a small, stone altar. On the focus of the stone is a wheel symbol that connects the serpent with the sky. This links with the Jupiter columns, where negative, Earth-bound forces are represented by a creature with snake limbs. The sacred symbols of Underworld, fertility, and healing are fused.

RAVEN

Carrion birds are prominent in Celtic religion. Because they consume dead things, they are associated with death and the journey to the Underworld.

The Mabinogion shows ravens as beneficent beings of the Otherworld, associated with Rhiannon.

On the other hand, in Irish legend, ravens are usually connected with warfare and destruction. The stories constantly tell of war goddesses such as the Mórrígan and Badb shapeshifting into ravens or crows.

Raven goddesses were able to foresee the disastrous outcomes of battles. This ability to foretell the future was used by Irish Druids in the process of their auguries.

In relation to the hero Cú Chulainn, ravens were malevolent creatures of the Otherworld.

RIVER

Rivers are regarded as sacred. They are fed by water that springs mysteriously from the Underworld. They are also in continuous motion, like living things. They are a focus for religious feeling and for offerings (see Places: Source de la Seine).

ROWAN

The rowan is the emblem tree for the second letter of the Ogham alphabet, Luis. By tradition, the sacred groves of the Druids were groves of oak or rowan.

Rowan trees flourish in mountain country, so the rowan is sometimes called the Lady of the Mountain. It is also known as witchwood, which reflects its role as a protector against witchcraft and fairies. Witches themselves have viewed the rowan as a magic tree, making use of its wood, leaves, and distinctive bright vermilion berries in their spell-casting.

In Scotland, the rowan is seen as giving protection against mischievous spirits, because of its red berries:

Rowan, lammer [amber] and red thread

Pits witches to their speed.

Rowan is one of the woods that may be used for making wands. Two rowan twigs tied together with red thread to make a cross may be used as a symbol of protection; this charm might be put over a door to ward off evil or over a baby’s cot to prevent the child being stolen by fairies (see Myths: Redeemed from Fairyland).

RULE OF THREE

(TRIPLISM)

Multiplying an image was a simple way of emphasizing it. In Britain and Gaul the most common way of doing this was to multiply an image by three. This is sometimes called triplism. Three was a Celtic magic number.

Showing deities in threes is not restricted to any one god or goddess. Some images are described and defined by their triplism, such as the Three Mothers, the Tres Matres (see Religion: Mother Goddess). There was also a Triple Mars: a stone tablet found in a Roman well at Lower Slaughter in Gloucestershire shows three identical war gods in a row. They conspicuously wear tunics and boots, like Roman soldiers, and carry round shields. They also, curiously, have a great deal of hair, in a style that looks like a mid-eighteenth-century wig.

It is possible that where the threefold image was used a great deal, as with the Three Mothers, there may have been some symbolism in the number three. Perhaps the three images stood for life, death, and rebirth, to remind us of the cycle of life. Perhaps they stood for three phases or aspects of a lifespan: childhood, adulthood, and old age.

King Arthur was said to have fought for three days and three nights at the Battle of Badon. This must have been an exaggeration and cannot be taken as literally true. It meant only “a long time.”

Perhaps the most interesting literary use of the rule of three comes in the Welsh Triads. These are verses or summary stories in which three of a kind are described. One Triad is The Three Very Famous Prisoners of the Island of Britain. It lists three long-forgotten Dark Age celebrities, then adds:

…and there was one who was more famous than all three: he was three nights in the prison of Kaer Oeth and Anoeth, and three nights in the prison of Wenn Pendragon, and three nights in the magic prison beneath the flagstone of Echymeint. This famous prisoner was Arthur. And the same youth released him from each of these three prisons, Goreu vab Custennin, his cousin.

Another triad reads, “The Three Red Ravagers of the Island of Britain: Rhun, son of Beli, Lleu Skilful Hand, and Morgant the Wealthy. But there was one who was a Red Ravager greater than all three: Arthur was his name.” (See Arthur.)

SERPENT

One of the most mysterious ancient Celtic symbols. Little understood, it seems to have stood for fertility. Because snakes emerge unpredictably from crevices in the rock, they are visitors from the Underworld (see Ram-horned Snake).

Snakes occupied a similar, and similarly mysterious, place in the Bronze Age Minoan belief system.

SHAMROCK

A modern Irish emblem of Ireland itself. The four-leafed clover, a relation of the shamrock, is said to bring good luck.

SHAPESHIFTING

Via shapeshifting, people, and more particularly gods and goddesses, were able to change into animals, and vice versa. People were also able to transform their own appearance deliberately, for example warriors pulled grotesque faces to make themselves more frightening in battle. The Celts took this to extremes. The description in the Irish folk-tale the Táin bó Cúalnge may exaggerate, but it gives an idea of what warriors were trying to achieve. The hero Cú Cuchlainn mounted his scythed battle chariot:

Then took place the first twisting fit and rage of the royal hero Cú Chulainn, so that he made a terrible, many-shaped, wonderful, unheard-of thing of himself. His flesh trembled about him like a pole against the torrent or like a bulrush against the stream… He made a mad whirling-feat of his body inside his hide… He gulped down one eye into his head so that it would be hard work if a wild crane succeeded in drawing it out to the middle of his cheek from the rear of his skull… The Hero’s Light stood out on his forehead, so that it was as long and as thick as a warrior’s whetstone, till he got furious handling the shields, thrusting out the charioteer, destroying the hosts… When now this contortion had been completed in Cú Chulainn then the hero of valour sprang into his scythed war chariot with its iron sickles.

An unusual coin from north-western France shows a horse with a gigantic human head, as if the horse is turning into a god. Behind the horse god is a suggestion of a chariot and a charioteer, holding onto the monster’s reins. The gold coin was minted by the Aulerci Diablintes tribe in the first century BC.

There are stories that indicate that a belief in the transmigration of souls was widespread in Wales; the departing soul went into the body of an animal (see Hare).

SHEELA-NA-GIGG

This is a grotesque naked female figure with exaggerated genitalia. She seems to be the female counterpart to a whole tribe of male images also with hugely exaggerated genitals (see Exaggeration; Places: Cerne Abbas).

The sheela-na-gigg is usually carved in stone. She is invariably squatting, and reaches down with both hands to pull the lips of her vulva wide apart. The exact meaning of this is lost to us, but it is possible to speculate. The figure is sexual only in the sense that it emphasizes genitals; it is in no way erotic. No attempt is made to show the figure as attractive—just the opposite. The image is repellent, so it may be that the intention is exactly that: to frighten off. People today still use sexual language aggressively, to frighten or intimidate others; the sheela-na-gig may have been designed to ward off evil.

Curiously, the image was borrowed by early church architecture; there are gargoyles and grotesque corbels built into Norman churches in Britain with sheel-na-gigg carvings. It may be that, as in earlier centuries, the Church was acknowledging the eccentricities of local pre-Christian beliefs and customs.

SHIELD KNOT

The triquetra is perhaps the simplest knot, with just three loops; the shield knot is the next simplest, with four.

The effect is to make a design with four “ears” marking the corners of a square space in the center. It is a protecting charm, with its edge marked by a never-ending path.

The shield knot is found in many cultures; it is not exclusive to the Celts.

SKY FALLING DOWN

Solemn oaths might be sworn under the sanction of the sun or moon or some other elemental part of the cosmos (see Vow). But if such oaths were broken, terrible retribution might follow. The worst fear was that the sky might fall down.

In the Irish folk-tale The Cattle Raid of Cuailnge, the Ulstermen are rebuked by the severed head of Sualtaimh for coming too sluggishly to the aid of the hero Cú Chulainn as he alone defends the province. Conchobar, King of the Ulstermen, answers the head:

“A little too loud is that cry, for the sky is above us and the sea all around us, but unless the sky with its showers of stars fall upon the surface of the earth or unless the ground burst open in an earthquake, or unless the fish-abounding, blue-bordered sea come over the face of the earth, I shall bring back every cow to its byre and enclosure, every woman to her own abode and dwelling, after victory in battle and combat and contest.”

This was a mighty oath the king was swearing on behalf of his people. If he and his people did not do as he promised, natural catastrophe would overwhelm them.

Similarly, when the inhabitants of the Adriatic coast were asked by Alexander the Great what they feared most, they said they feared no one; their only fear was that the sky might fall down on them.

SKY HORSEMAN

The wheel god on horseback represents a particular aspect of the god: the dominion of life over death. Where he is shown with a wheel, he usually holds it in his left hand as if it were a shield; his wrist passes between the spokes to hold onto the reins of his horse. More distinctive still are the monsters under the horse’s hooves. They represent the dark forces of the Earth and Underworld, and the sky god is riding them down, trampling them underfoot. This is a very specific scene from Celtic myth.

The more sophisticated carvings at first sight look like classical equestrian groups, and they are found only in the western provinces of the Roman Empire, but they are heavy with mythic significance and symbolism. Above all, they were raised in honor of the Celtic sky god. They were well and truly raised, too, on top of lofty columns, and there were about 150 of them. These “Jupiter columns” or “Jupiter-Giant columns” were very imposing monuments. The one that stood at Hausen-an-der-Zaber near Stuttgart has been reconstructed and it looks like a miniature Nelson’s Column.

The stone base was eight-sided or four-sided, displaying images of gods to do with the sun, moon, and planets, and inscriptions to Jupiter or Juno. On top of the plinth is a tall pillar decorated with foliage patterns to suggest that it represents a tree: the Hausen column was decorated with oak leaves and acorns, the oak being sacred to Jupiter in the Roman world.

The symbolism of the pillar-tree is interesting in itself. Possibly there were early, crude versions made of wood, which in turn were based on even earlier sacred trees. The column may represent a pillar to support the sky, or it may be there to hoist the sculpture of the sky god as near as possible to the celestial world. Or it could symbolize the link between the two worlds, like the beanstalk in Jack and the Beanstalk. On top is a Corinthian capital, which supports the sculpture of the sky horseman trampling the monster. The overall height of the monument at Merten was 49 feet (15m).

The sculpture at the top is the key to the monument’s meaning. The image is a horseman riding over a humanoid monster whose legs are in the form of snakes. This may ultimately reflect depictions of a Greek myth in which the Olympian gods do battle with the earthly Titans, as the Titans are shown with snake limbs. But the classical battle never shows a horse. The horse is purely Celtic, and is intended to show that the rider is the sun god or sky god. Rider and rearing horse together show Jupiter as Celtic sky lord, the quintessence of sky, light, goodness, and the life-force. Jupiter is in a dualistic conflict with his opposite: an earthbound, dark, and probably evil monster. The dualism may incorporate ideas of good and evil, light and darkness, day and night, higher and lower aspects of mythic beings, and perhaps even life and death. Seen in this way, the set-piece drama shown on the Jupiter column is a major key to Celtic religious thought.

A Jupiter column once stood in the Roman town of Cirencester. A formal inscription has survived that records its restoration in the Roman period, but “under the old religion.” It was rebuilt by a governor of the province of Britannia Prima, Lucius Septimius, a citizen of Rheims. Diocletian did not divide Britain into four provinces until AD 296, so the restoration must be later than that. The interesting reference to “the old religion” may refer to the pagan revival that happened during the reign of the Emperor Julian in the middle of the fourth century AD. The very finely carved Corinthian capital of the Cirencester column survives.

But it must be their ambitious size that strikes us most about the Jupiter columns. They must, incidentally, have been expensive to build. They now exist only in a fragmentary state, and the remains show signs of deliberate vandalism. It may well be that Christians deliberately set out to topple and deface these very conspicuous monuments to pagan beliefs.

SPEAR

The magic spear in Celtic lore usually has to be forged by a certain smith for a certain purpose. Lleu, for example, might be slain only with a spear that has taken a whole year to make, and that has only been worked at on a Sunday, during the time when Mass is celebrated. Because he is divine, he is magically protected in a number of ways; he cannot be killed on foot or on horseback; he may not be killed indoors or out in the open. The only way he envisages that he can be killed is in a bath on a riverbank, with a thatched, round roof above the bath; he would have to place one foot on the back of a goat and the other on the edge of the bath. Then, and only in that position, might he be killed with the spear (see Myths: The Four Branches of the Mabinogi).

The smith himself is invariably an uncanny figure, and it must be suspected that the character is a borrowing from Greek or Roman mythology, where the smith-god Hephaistos or Vulcan cuts a very similar figure. The ancestry of the cunning smith god probably reaches right back to the Bronze Age, where the first creations of metal objects—and swords and spears in particular—must have seemed pure magic.

The Irish smith-god Gobhniu prepares the spear that kills Balor, the Fomorian Cyclops god. It is Lugh, the grandson, who plunges the spear into the single eye of Balor, in revenge for the killing of his father, MacKineely.

Lugh, the sun god, owns a magic spear that seems to symbolize the sun’s rays. His spear has a life of its own, and a thirst for blood. It can only be kept from killing by soaking its point in an infusion of poppy leaves. When the day of battle comes, the spear may be lifted from this narcotic anesthetic brew. Then it shouts and lashes itself into a frenzy, giving off flashes of flame. Once freed, it hurls itself into the enemy ranks, dealing death in an orgy of slaughter).

SPELL

The natural and spirit world can to some limited extent be controlled by chanting spells. This is the magical equivalent of prayer. Several seventeenth-century manuscripts offer magic spells for gaining power over fairies: some to call them up, and some to get rid of them—a kind of pest control:

An excellent way to get a Fayrie, but for myselfe I call Margaret Barrance but this will obtaine any one that is not already bound.

First get a broad square christall or Venus glasse in length and breadth 3 inches, then lay that glasse or christall in the bloud of a white henne 3 Wednesdays or 3 Fridays: then take it out and wash it with holy aqua and fumigate it: then take 3 hazle sticks or wands of a yeare growth, pill them fayre and white, and make so longe as you write the spiritts name, or fairies name, which you call 3 times, one every sticke being made flatt one side, then bury them under some hill whereas you suppose fairies haunt, the Wednesday before you call her, and the Friday followinge take them uppe and call hir at 8 or 3 or 10 of the clocke which be good plannetts and howres for that turne: but when you call, be in cleane Life and turne thy face towards the east, and when you have her bind her to that stone or Glasse.

Here, much easier, so long as you can speak Latin, is a call to the Queen of the Fairies:

Micol o tu micoll regina pigmeorum deus Abraham: deus Isaac: deus Jacob; tibi benedicat et omnia fausta danet et concedat Modo venias et mihi moremgem veni. Igitur o tu micol in nomine Jesus veni cito ters quatur beati in qui nomini Jesu veniunt veni Igitur O tu micol in nomine Jesu veni cito qui sit omnis honor laus et gloria in omne aeturnum. Amen Amen.

SPIRAL

An ancient symbol that was important throughout the evolution of the Celtic culture. The oldest spirals that exist in the British Isles are those that decorate the Boyne passage graves. Spirals were carefully and elaborately carved into the huge stone at the entrance to the Newgrange passage grave 5,000 years ago.

Another stone, deep in the heart of the tomb, was carved with another double-triple spiral, very like the one at the entrance. The central tomb chamber where the second double-triple spiral was placed was lit by the sun, just once a year, at the midwinter sunrise, when the rays of the sun were allowed in through a specially made roofbox, a slot above the blocked door.

Similar complex multiple spirals were carved into the stones forming the chamber walls of the Gavrinis passage grave in Brittany.

The spiral is a long-enduring symbol, a true archetype, and one that has many meanings. The outward-moving path, endlessly expanding as it goes out, suggests limitless possibilities. It also symbolizes a journey, inward or outward, and perhaps both. Jung saw the spiral as a symbol of psychic journeying, inward toward the center of the self, then out again in order to function in the everyday world. It became, in the twentieth century at least, a symbol of reculer pour mieux sauter, a favorite psychic healing technique of Jung, and of the self-discovery to which it leads.

The spiral is the simplest form of labyrinth, one in which no choices are presented beyond the choice to travel. It is a single path, a path to the center and back.

Other spirals lead on from one to another. The triple spiral that is the central focus of the Newgrange passage grave is in fact a triple double-spiral: each spiral has a path to lead you in and a second path to lead you out again; that takes you by way of an S-bend to the next spiral, where the same thing happens again. This is a very highly ordered never-ending path: a maze to make you giddy. What the makers of it meant is probably unknowable. But it is at least certain that this visually powerful symbol was an intentional design, because it was repeated exactly on the huge entrance stone at the outer end of the entrance passage, and the Newgrange spirals meant journeying, perhaps the never-ending journeying of the sun and also the possibly-never-ending journeying of the human spirit (see Labyrinth, Triskele).

STAG

The stag symbolizes the spirit of the forest. It bears antlers that are themselves treelike, so the beast actually seems to carry the forest around on its head. It is agile, fast, and sexually vigorous, so it represents in itself the vigor of self-regenerating nature. The mysterious shedding of the antlers each autumn and their regrowth in the spring emphasize the general seasonal cycle of the forest, which sheds its foliage each autumn and grows new each spring.

Stag symbolism is to the fore on the Gundestrup cauldron. The stag-horned god Cernunnos is shown with a stag beside him. On another vessel, a god is shown gripping a stag in each hand.

Stag figurines in bronze are not very common, but there is no doubt that the stag cult was widespread. A stone found in Luxembourg shows a stag with a stream of coins coming out of its mouth. A carved stone from Rheims shows Cernunnos with a stag and a bull, drinking from a stream of coins. The imagery is supposed to convey that stags are associated with prosperity. But in most places, the stag is firmly connected with hunting. In northern Britain, the stag was associated with the hunter-god Cocidius. At Colchester, the god Silvanus Callirius (Silvanus the woodland king) was associated with a stag at a shrine.

At Le Donon in the Vosges, there was a mountain shrine where a nature god or hunter god was worshiped. He was depicted in stone, clothed in an animal pelt hung with fruit; he rested his hand in a gesture of benediction on the antlers of a stag standing beside him. The images of forest and hunting come face to face with images of benign prosperity. The relationship between hunter and hunted is close, almost affectionate in nature, and like no other Celtic image it shows the Celtic mindset regarding the relationship between humanity and nature.

A sculpture of a divine couple made by the Aedui tribe shows the god and goddess presiding over the animal kingdom. They are seated side by side with their feet resting on two stags below them. The god offers a goblet of wine to a horse beside him, while the goddess symmetrically offers a drink to a second horse that she is caressing. This region of Burgundy was a horse-breeding area. It was also an area where the stag-antlered Cernunnos (virtually a stag god) was worshiped. The stag was a shorthand image for nature and the world of animals.

The antlers of the stag are a reminder of the potential violence of nature, of the fact that nature can do people harm, but they are also attributes of mainly gentle, shy, and benign creatures who are not hostile to people. They are also symbols of the masculine fertility of the rutting stag and of the fertility of nature in general.

STANDING STONES

The practice of raising standing stones began very early in Brittany, perhaps as far back as 4000 BC, and spread rapidly to the other regions of the Atlantic Celts—and beyond. Standing stones became a widespread feature across a large area of western Europe.

The simplest type of monument is a naturally weathered stone tipped up on end into a supporting pit and held in place by some packing boulders in the pit around the base. In France these are called menhirs, “long stones.” In Britain they are called standing stones.

Sometimes the standing stone acts as a territorial marker, and sometimes (especially in later antiquity) as a grave marker. They may be places where sacrifices were made. In some places they acted as foresights for alignments on cols or hilltops on the horizon where a particular astronomical event, such as a midwinter sunset, might be observed. Many such locations have been identified, and there were evidently used to mark and honor certain landmarks in the calendar.

The most impressive standing stone in Britain is the Rudston Monolith (monolith = single stone) in Yorkshire. It is 26 feet (8m) high and is believed to weigh more than 80 tons (70 tonnes).

Its dominance in the landscape has been destroyed by the building of the parish church right next to it. Whether this was a deliberate attempt to steal the ancient monument’s thunder can never be known, but it was common for churches to be built in places that were already a focus for communal worship and ritual. Christian missionaries were explicitly advised to do this by Pope Gregory.

What is no longer visible at Rudston is the big ceremonial landscape that surrounded the tall monolith. There were no avenues of standing stones leading to it—there were too few suitable stones available in the area—but there were three avenues marked by earth banks, called cursus monuments. These huge processional ways converged on the Rudston Monolith.

The name “Rudston” comes from rud stan, meaning “cross-stone.” It would seem that at some stage, perhaps in the early Middle Ages, some well-meaning Christians understood that the stone was a leftover from the pagan past and perched a cross or a cross-beam on top to render it harmless. Some Breton menhirs had their tops carved into crosses to Christianize them.

What we see here, and at other standing-stone sites such as Carnac in Brittany, or Stenness in Orkney, or Avebury in Wiltshire, is a profound relationship developing between people and landscape.

Single standing stones are often hard to interpret. By 3200 BC, the practice had developed into the laying out of stone circles, such as Avebury in Wiltshire or the Ring of Brodgar in Orkney. Lines of stones were laid out to mark a ceremonial path across the landscape. Sometimes two lines were set up to make an avenue. Two winding stone avenues led to the great stone circle at Avebury: one to the west entrance and one to the south entrance; these were evidently ceremonial ways.

This architecture of great stones was developed still further to make a whole family of stone tombs. Three stone slabs might be raised to make three sides of a square, then a fourth slab might be slid on top to make a roof. This burial chamber might then be covered by an earth mound with an entrance on one side. If the grave mound needed to be big and imposing, the tomb chamber might be given an entrance passage. This was made by raising two rows of vertical slabs and then adding a slab roof. The passage grave Maes Howe in Orkney was designed in this way, but with a variation: the four chamber slabs were erected in the corners and the sides were made of drystone walling using large, flat slabs of sandstone.

SUN

The sun is often represented by a wheel. The journey of the sun across the sky needed horses as well as a chariot with wheels, so the horse itself was probably seen as a sun symbol. Celtic coins carry horse and sun signs together.

The goddess Nehalennia had a solar aspect. One image of her from Domburg shows her wearing a solar amulet. An altar dedicated to her from the same site has a radiant sun depicted at its top. Mother goddesses too were sometimes accompanied by a sun wheel, so we should not be too quick to identify deities with sun symbols as sun deities. The link may be subtler.

Sucellus, the hammer god, is sometimes shown decorated with sun symbols, suggesting some kind of association with the sun. This may be a more general association with sky, as if the hammer is telling us that Sucellus is the thunder god. Thunder comes from the heavens, where the sun also is.

SWORD

Celtic tales contain many references to magic swords. The Irish sea god, Manannán mac Lir, owned no fewer than three such magic weapons, named The Retaliator (or Answerer), The Great Fury, and The Little Fury.

Another Irish deity, Nuada of the Silver Hand, was the owner of a sword known as The Silver Hand, and which features in the stories about the Tuatha dé Danann.

Finn MacCoul, hero of Finn MacCoul and the Bent Gray Lad, had a notable sword, made specially for him by his grandfather. Its edge was so sharp that no second blow was ever needed. In its forging, it had been tempered with the blood “of a living thing”—a dog (see The Grail Quest).

According to the Arthurian romances, Lancelot’s magic sword is called Arondight.

Then there is Excalibur, the ever-famous Otherworldly sword of Arthur, given to him by the Lady of the Lake and ultimately returned to the lake after his final battle was fought.

TREASURE

In the days before the Anglo-Saxons arrived and divided up the Island of Britain, and before the island was converted to Christianity, there were, it is said, “Thirteen Treasures of the Island of Britain.” These are mentioned in various medieval documents included in The Red Book of Hergest, which was written in about 1400, and The Black Book of Carmarthen, which contains poetry of the ninth–twelfth centuries, much of it written in the voice of Myrddin.

These are the Treasures of Britain:

1 The Horn of Bran of the North. It will supply you with whatever drink you wish for.

2 Dyrnwyn, the magic Sword of Rhydderch the Generous. Dyrnwyn means “White Hilt.” When an honorable man draws this sword, it flames from tip to hilt.

3 The Hamper of Gwyddno Long Shanks. Food for one man may be put inside it. When the hamper is reopened, there is enough food for 100 men.

4 The Chariot of Morgan the wealthy. Step into the chariot and it will take wherever you wish to go—instantly.

5 The Halter of Clyddno Eiddyn. If a man fixes this to the foot of his bed, whatever horse he wishes for will be there by morning.

6 The Knife of Llawfrodedd the horseman. This will serve for 24 men sitting at table.

7 The Cauldron of Dyrnwch the Giant. If meat for a coward is put into the cauldron, it will never boil, but meat for a brave man will boil immediately. So a coward may be recognized at once.

8 The Whetstone of Tudwal Tudglyd. If a brave man sharpens his blade on the whetstone and then draws blood from his enemy, the enemy will die. If a coward sharpens his blade on it, his opponent will be unharmed.

9 The Cloak of Padarn. A test of breeding: when a nobly born man puts on the cloak, it fits him perfectly; when a low-born man puts on the cloak, it will not fit.

10 The Crock and

11 Dish of Rhgenydd the Cleric. Whatever food you wish for is found in these bowls.

12 The Chess Board of Gwenddolau, son of Ceidio. If the pieces are set they will play by themselves. The board is made of gold and the chess pieces are made of silver.

13 The Mantle of Arthur in Cornwall. Whoever is under the mantle cannot be seen, and yet he is able to see everything.

The manuscripts say that the keepers of the Treasures met “in the North.” At this meeting, Myrddin asked that the Thirteen Treasures be handed to him. The keepers were reluctant, but in the end agreed, on condition that he obtained the Horn of Bran of the North; if Myrddin could acquire the horn, they would hand over the other 12 treasures.

Myrddin took the Thirteen Treasures of the Island of Britain to the Castle of Glass, where they remain to this day. No one knows where this castle is, though it is said that the Welsh goddess Arianrhod lives in a castle of glass hidden in Snowdonia; that is where she spins the threads that make the web of life, so perhaps the Thirteen Treasures are in Snowdonia.

It is said that if the Thirteen Treasures can be brought back together again in this mortal world, then the Mab Darogan, the Son of Prophecy, a Celtic Messiah, will arise.

TREE OF LIFE

Trees had a major symbolic importance in the ancient Celtic mindset, being associated with the bursting forth of life. Trees in the north-west European spring look like frozen fountains of leaves; they are the clearest image of goodness drawn up out of the Earth and made available for our use.

A very primitive sculpture from Caerwent, a purely Celtic work found in a pit near the Romano-Celtic temple, shows a mother goddess holding in front of her a palm or conifer branch in one hand and a small fruit in the other. The palm could represent victory over death if this was a Roman artwork, but the crudity of the carving implies that it was made locally, and few Britons living in South Wales would have seen a palm tree.

Cernunnos, the nature god, is naturally shown with a tree, to symbolize his forest home and that of his stags. The symbolism goes one layer deeper, though, as the stag’s antlers are treelike in form, and trees seem to have been the model for the form of the beast. There is an empathic bond between the animals and their environmental setting that fascinates the Celtic mind.

The god Esus is shown chopping down a willow tree in a symbolic enactment of the seasonal death of vegetation.

The symbolism of trees has been taken up and developed in neo-Celtic beliefs, in which specific human values are attributed to specific tree species. The idea is that through meditation we can be absorbed into the essence of a tree, tap into its energies, and by doing so expand our capacities as human beings. It is a way of engaging and bonding with nature (see Ash Tree, Ogham).

TRIPLE-HORNED BULL

The three-horned bull, an essentially Gaulish creature, is shown in stone or bronze. About 35 have been found in Gaul and only six in Britain. The silvered bronze bull from the shrine at Maiden Castle has traces of three female figures who were originally riding on his back. A remarkable find at Willingham was a three-horned bull decorating a scepter-terminal, together with images relating to the sky god.

The tripling of the horn may be explained in different ways. Triplism, or “threeness,” is a powerful symbol of intensification. Horns are strong fertility symbols. Multiplying that fertility by three is a way of exaggerating the statement’s power. The three horns also serve to pull the image out of the realm of everyday objects and events. (See Exaggeration, Rule of Three).

TRIQUETRA

The triquetra is the simplest possible knot. It is three intersecting lenses that connect in such a way that they are formed from a single continuous line. It is another never-ending path, like the labyrinth or the spiral.

The triquetra symbol is very common in Celtic art, especially in metalwork and illuminated manuscripts such as The Book of Kells. It was not seen in Celtic art until the seventh century, however, and is by no means unique to Celtic artwork. It is found on northern European rune stones and early Germanic coins. The symbol had a pagan religious meaning and it may be significant that it is similar to the Valknut, a symbol of the god Odin.

The triquetra is rarely allowed to stand on its own in medieval Celtic art, which has led some to say that it was probably never a primary symbol of belief. Its main role appears to have been to fill a space or as an ornament within more complex compositions. In knotwork panels, the triquetra often appears as a design motif. But these observations overlook the fact that the triquetra is a very simple design that incorporates both the rule of three and the never-ending path. In Celtic minds this must have given it a certain power.

In the Christian period, the triquetra has seen use as a symbol of the Holy Trinity, especially in and since the nineteenth-century Celtic revival.

A very common development of the triquetra is its combination with a circle. The circle emphasizes the unity of the combination of the three elements of the triquetra. As such, it makes a perfect symbol of the Holy Trinity, the Three-in-One and One-in-Three, “God in three persons.” In neo-pagan beliefs, the triquetra is seen as symbolizing the three stages of the Triple Goddess: maiden, mother, and crone.

In modern times, the triquetra is often used as a pattern in jewelry, such as a necklace or ring. Here is it seen as representing three promises inherent in a relationship, such as to love, honor, and protect. The knot is commonly engraved on wedding rings. In neopagan groups, especially Celtic Reconstructionist groups, the triquetra is used to represent one of the many triplets or triads in the belief system, such as the three-fold division of the world into land, sea, and sky, or one of the Triple Goddesses (see Labyrinth, Rule of Three, Spiral).

TRISKELE

(TRIPLE SPIRAL)

The triple spiral occurs as a religious symbol in many early cultures. As far as the Atlantic Celts are concerned, it makes its appearance in around 3200 BC in the carvings on the megalithic tombs in the Boyne Valley in Ireland. The most famous example is the double-triple spiral carved into a stone right at the heart of the great megalithic passage grave of Newgrange.

Each of the three spirals consists of two lines. The symbolism may be simple: one path in and the other out. With any labyrinth, there has to be a way in and a way out, and the spiral is the simplest form of labyrinth. The triple spirals at Newgrange date from the time of the passage grave’s construction, 5,000 years ago. So the triskele has been part of the Celtic culture of the Atlantic west for a very long time.

It is possible to manufacture all kinds of symbolism for the triple spiral. It was in use in ancient Greece. It was in use as an ancient symbol of Sicily. Pliny the Elder attributed the origin of the Sicilian triskele to the triangular shape of the island. This is possible, but it is an explanation that will not do elsewhere, for instance in Neolithic Ireland.

In the early Christian, post-Roman world, the device was easily adopted as a symbol of the Trinity. It must be suspected, though, that usually when it was used in illuminated Gospels in the eighth and ninth centuries AD it was for the convenience of its shape—a natural space-filler between the curves of the main designs and the corners of the page.

Celtic neo-pagans also use the triskele symbol to represent a range of triplisms. It is tailor-made to represent any of the many triads in the Celtic tradition (see Rule of Three).

WATER

There is a fascination among the Celts with water in all its forms: the sea, lakes, bogs, rivers, streams, and springs. Water is necessary and essential. People need to drink it and cattle need to drink it; it is essential to make crops grow and keep pastures green. But water can also cause problems. A heavy rainstorm can batter down a cereal crop and a storm at sea can sink ships and drown sailors. There are strong water-veneration and water-propitiation traditions in both Britain and Gaul.

One manifestation of this veneration is the age-old custom of dropping offerings to gods into water. The Battersea shield and the Waterloo Bridge helmet were both very valuable metal objects, high-status objects, that were dropped into the Thames River as offerings. This custom went on throughout the Bronze and Iron Ages. The practice continues even to the present day, on a very small scale, with the tradition of leaving coins in wishing wells.

The Otherworld was seen literally as being underground, so springs were seen as sacred portals: places where water passes from the Otherworld into this world. St. Augustine’s Well at Cerne Abbas was probably a pagan sacred spring that was later Christianized. There are many superstitions surrounding the spring, and visitors still throw the occasional coin into it.

Some years ago, I met Lady Vickers when she was responsible for cleaning St. Augustine’s Well and she showed me two coins that she had retrieved from the spring. One was a 1950s threepenny piece. The other looked as if it might have the bust of a Roman emperor on one side and a classical temple on the other. This was potentially an exciting discovery, as it conceivably might be evidence that the spring was visited in the Roman-British period. Initially it was identified by Chichester Museum as a fourth-century AD Roman coin. Closer examination revealed the word “TED” on the reverse. Dr. Howgego of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford conclusively identified the coin for me as modern American, a ten-cent piece dating from around 1960, showing Abraham Lincoln on one side and the Lincoln Memorial on the other. The corroded and lime-encrusted condition of the coin made it look much older than it actually was; the alleged healing properties of the water prematurely aging it 1,600 years in just 30. The initial excitement of the discovery gave way to disappointment. On the other hand, Roman coins have turned up in rabbit burrows within 100 yards (91m) of St. Augustine’s Well, so we do after all have evidence that the site was visited during the Roman occupation.

Rivers had local cults, many involving depositing offerings in the water. In August 12 BC, Drusus set up the cult of Rome and Augustus outside Lyons (Lugdunum) at the confluence of the Saône and the Rhône. He set up a temple and an altar. On the altar were inscribed the names of 60 Gaulish tribes. The consecration ceremony was conducted by the chief priest of the Aedui tribe, and it must represent a recognition of native Celtic religious ideas.

There were many other river cults. Condatis was the god of the watersmeet. The name of the consort of Sucellus, Nantosuelta, meant “Winding River.” Many of the rivers had female deities. The goddess of the Wharfe in northern England was Verbeia.

One explanation for the focus on water for offerings may lie in the simple fact that water was the ultimate resting place of the dead. Earlier, the Battersea shield was mentioned. This was found in the lower Thames along with a large quantity of other prehistoric metalwork, in the same reaches as human remains, including many skulls. So some stretches of some rivers were used for depositing the dead and the offerings to the Otherworld to accompany them. The Thames was not the only river to be treated in this way: the Witham in Lincolnshire was deluged with offerings. The Witham shield, bearing strange animal decoration, is one of many high-status objects to come out of the river not far from Lincoln. A brand-new logboat was deliberately “sacrificed” underneath a timber causeway with a large collection of tools and weapons. The timber was dated to the middle of the fifth century BC.

Springs were often associated with healing. Some were doubtless visited informally in the hope that a prayer or a small offering to the water deity would relieve a toothache, backache, or failing sight. Others were developed with full-scale sanctuaries. At the Giant’s Springs at Duchcov in the Czech Republic there is a natural spring. In the third or second century BC a large bronze cauldron was dedicated to the spring. It contained more than 2,000 bronze offerings: mainly brooches and bracelets. This is interesting in itself, but doubly so since most of the offerings to water elsewhere seem to be not only male in origin but military, like the Battersea shield. Here at the Giant’s Springs is what looks like a collective offering that is exclusively female. But this cannot be pressed too far, as men also wore jewelry. Presumably these offerings were deposited one by one, by individual people over a period, and then collected together to be deposited in the cauldron.

Lakes and bogs were also places people visited in the hope of divine intercession. It is likely that the locations that are now bogs were lakes in the Iron Age; they have become filled up with silt and vegetation. One attraction of lakes was that the offerings left there would rest undisturbed: there was no flow of water to move the offerings around.

The classical writers tell us about the practice. Strabo describes an incident that happened in 106 BC in the territory of the Volcae Tectosages tribe, who lived in the Toulouse area. The tribe had amassed an enormous hoard of gold and silver sacred treasure in the form of metal ingots heaped up at the Tolosa sanctuary; some in temple enclosures and some in a sacred lake. The treasure was plundered by the Romans. Strabo comments that religious treasure hoards such as this existed in many parts of the Celtic lands, “and the lakes in particular provided inviolability for their treasures, into which they let down heavy masses of silver and gold.” The Tolosa sanctuary was regarded by the Gauls as especially sacred; its treasure was unusually large, partly because the place was regarded as unusually sacred and no one would have contemplating committing sacrilege there. The Romans, of course, had no such scruple. The trauma experienced by the Volcae Tectosages when they had their lake sanctuary ransacked can only be imagined.

St. Gregory of Tours describes a three-day (pagan) religious festival that took place at Lake Gévaudan in the Cévennes. During this annual festival, the local peasants threw into the lake food, clothing, and the bodies of sacrificed animals. Depositing offerings into deep water meant that they could never be retrieved; they were gone beyond physical recovery, and were in effect sent to the Otherworld. Throwing something away so irrevocably must have added to the value of the sacrificial act.

The Daghda, an Irish father god, was wedded to the land by being married to the territorial goddess Boanna of the Boyne River. According to legend, she was detained by Nechtan when she questioned the power of his sacred spring.

Water is a regenerative force. Some of the healing springs are a source of mineral water with true medicinal qualities; others are just a source of pure clean water. Water is seen as healing in a number of ways. Devotees can apply it to infected areas of their body, wash in it, immerse themselves in it, or drink it. The evidence from all the different sanctuaries points to all methods being used. Healing and ritual cleansing always go together.

The Lady of the Lake represents the later Celtic aspect of water magic, the Romantic and mysterious aspect. In the fully developed Arthurian legend of the high Middle Ages, there are several fairy ladies who appear and disappear. By the time Sir Thomas Malory told his version of the story, the fairies (originally from the Otherworld) had been converted into enchantresses (dwelling in this world, but with magic powers). Early versions of the tales show the fairy nature of enchantresses better.

One very early version of the Lancelot story has the Lady of the Lake as a true spirit of the lake; a queen of an isle of lake maidens in the middle of an enchanted lake, where winter never comes and there is no sorrow. Later in the Middle Ages, the same queen becomes a sorceress and even the lake is an illusion. Jessie Weston argued that the original tale was about the capture of a royal child by a water-fairy. But the Lady of the Lake is still there, just, in the final rendition of the Arthur story. She gives the sword Excalibur to him at the beginning of his reign and takes it back again at the end as a summons to Avalon. At the end of the story, we see only her arm sticking up out of the lake; in the process of endless re-telling, she has almost disappeared from the story.

THE WEST

To the west is the open Atlantic Ocean, and beyond that—who knows? It is an obvious location for lost lands, for fantastic adventures, and for the Otherworld itself. It is also the place where the sun sets, and therefore associated with death. The west becomes the destination of departed souls, the Isle of the Dead.

The west is the perilous seascape within which the voyages of St. Brendan took place (see People: Barinthus, Brendan; Religion: Otherworld).

WHEEL

The wheel had become a cult symbol by the end of the Bronze Age. Often it can be seen in Iron Age images, for example on coins, just floating in a corner. It may represent exactly what it seems to represent: the wheel of a wagon or a chariot. On some coins the wheel floats beneath a horse, and in that context it looks as if a chariot might be intended. If so, it could represent the power of trade or the military power of the warrior elite. Given that chariots and wagons were often included among the grave goods of the rich and powerful, the wheel may represent a very specific journey: the journey to the Otherworld.

In about 600 BC a remarkable cult wagon was built at Strettweg in Austria. It carries a group of human figures with battle trumpets (horsemen and infantry with spears and shields), surrounding a large central female figure who holds a shallow bronze bowl above her head. The wagon has four large eight-spoked wheels.

But the wheel could equally be a transformation of the sun, in which case it could take on a variety of meanings, such as life, strength, power, and sovereignty. The wheel is a natural symbol for the sun: it is round, it has spokes that radiate like the sun’s rays, and it is capable of moving. Even where it is shown with a horse it could represent the sun, because a celestial horse was envisaged as necessary to draw the sun across the sky.

The solar wheel cult had been in existence for a long time. The Trundholm chariot from Denmark dates from 1300 BC. It consists of a bronze model horse pulling a bronze disk, gold-plated on one side and borne along on three pairs of wheels. There can be no doubt that this disc represents the sun and the horse is imagined as drawing the sun across the sky. Sometimes the wheel is paired with a crescent, making the obvious paired association between sun and moon.

The wheel is not considered to be self-running; even if it is shown on its own, there is an implication that some god must be responsible for rolling it along. Some figurines show a deity with one hand on the wheel, so in those depictions we can see who it is who rolls it. A favorite Roman goddess was Fortuna, who was responsible for turning the wheel of fortune. She appears on Roman coins, and the image is very familiar to Britons of an older generation, because she was adopted and adapted to become Britannia, who very similarly appeared on coins. In her new role as Britannia, Fortuna finds her wheel of fortune itself transformed—into Britannia’s proudly held round shield.

Another transformation of the solar wheel to suit the values of a later age is the rose window. Several great European cathedrals have magnificent rose windows, which are huge sun-wheels made of stone and glass and sunlight. In the Middle Ages they were actually referred to as rota: “wheels.”

In the last two centuries BC, an Iron Age celestial and mainly solar cult becomes evident, with the wheel as its symbol. The Romans had their sky god, Jupiter, borrowed from the Greek Zeus, and these were powerful bearded male figures, emphatically modeled on the human male. But among the Celts, representations of the gods in human form were still quite unusual. By the second century AD, however, a Romano-Celtic wheel god had emerged. This late shift into human form is an indication of the Celts’ reluctance to think of their gods in human form; in this case it seems only to have happened as a result of contact with the Greco-Roman civilization. But in a way we are lucky that this happened, or we might not have realized that the wheel was in fact a god.

Miniature wheels have been found at a number of Iron Age sites, from Britain across to Slovakia. Often these are only 1 inch (2.5cm) in diameter, with four spokes, but some are larger and have six or as many as 12 spokes. They were probably carried as talismans or good luck charms.

At the La Tène site of Villeneuve au Châtelot in France, large numbers of lead wheel models have been found at a site that is believed to be a temple. The lead wheels were presumably sold to worshippers to leave as offerings, as a kind of divine currency.

In a similar spirit, wheel models were left as grave goods. At the Dürrnberg hillfort near Hallein in Austria, the grave of a small boy dating from 400 BC contained jewelry that included a realistic wheel model. Another grave, of a young girl, contained a model wheel and a model axe. Grave goods such as these were left as a help on what was imagined to be a difficult journey. The little girl was very small for her age, to the point of disability, and this may be why her parents felt that she needed some good luck charms to help her on her way.

The wheel was also inscribed on tombstones. In the cremation cemeteries of Alsace there are some distinctive house-shaped tombstones, which have wheel symbols scratched onto them. Some have wheels and rosettes together.

Irish legend tells of a magic wheel, the Roth Fáil, made by the Druid Mog Ruith. This wheel is said to have carried the Druid through the heavens, but it met with an accident and broke up. Mog Ruith’s daughter, Tlachtga, gathered some fragments of the wheel, and took them to Ireland, which in itself (according to Irish tradition) was a calamity. She raised one of the fragments as the pillar-stone of Cnamchoill, near Tipperary. The Roth Fáil, the Wheel of Light, was clearly not intended to be a flying-machine at all but to symbolize the sun, and some of the storytellers who passed on the story did not understand this. This has its parallel in the Greek tale about Icarus, who flew through the air with aid of a pair of wings made by his father Daedalus; he flew too close to the sun and the sun’s heat melted the wax that held the feathers in place.

A Roman sarcophagus dating from AD 350 has a remarkable symbol carved on it. It combines the circular Roman laurel wreath, the wreath of victory and immortality, with the chi-rho symbol: the first two letters of the name of Christ when spelt in Greek, “X” and “P.” So the symbol represents Christ Victorious. Yet these elements have been carefully put together to make a six-spoked wheel. It is the sun-wheel of the Celtic pagan god Taranis, but Romanized and Christianized to make it into what is sometimes called an Ichthys wheel.

The wheel with eight spokes instead of six is the Wheel of the Year, with its eight calendar festivals:

December: Winter Solstice

February: Imbolg

March: Spring Equinox

May: Beltane

June: Summer Solstice

August: Lughnasad

September: Autumn Equinox

November: Samhain

WIDDERSHINS

There is a very old custom, when walking around something, to walk round it clockwise, in other words veering to the right. This is seen as conforming to the movement of the sun across the sky. Viewed from northern Europe, the sun is generally in the southern half of the sky, and when you look south the sun rises to your left and crosses to the right, so this clockwise processional movement is sometimes described as “sunwise.” It is in keeping with the natural order of the universe.

We can imagine the ancestors of the Celts walking or dancing around their stone and earth circles “sunwise,” perhaps in rituals that related directly to the movements of the sun itself. In Irish and Scottish Gaelic this movement with the sun is called deiseal (right-handwise).

The opposite, circling to the left hand, is called tuathal in Gaelic, and is regarded as unlucky. It is known in England and Lowland Scotland as “widdershins,” meaning “walking against.”

In the seventeenth century, if ordinary people in the Western Isles of Scotland happened to be passing a prehistoric cairn, they used to make a point of walking around it three times, always sunwise, for good luck. It made no difference whether they were Protestants or Catholics—it was understood, even then, that this was a very ancient custom handed down from the way their ancestors worshiped. On Colonsay, people walked “sunways” around the church and turned their boats in the same way. In the Highlands, wedding processions often went clockwise round the church. Herdsmen danced three times sunways around the Beltane fire.

To go widdershins was to go the wrong way. A Scottish witch who was refused some grain by a neighbor deliberately walked around the neighbor’s stack the wrong way, “contrair to the sunis cours,” in order to do damage to the grain.

WILLOW

A tree associated with mourning, because of its drooping shape, and therefore also with death. The fact that willows grow near water may also associate them with the Otherworld. Willow is supposed to assist in communicating with the Otherworld. It was sometimes used to line graves for this reason (see Crane).

WITCHCRAFT

WITCHES IN WALES

On the whole, witches and wise men were feared or respected in Wales, and generally left alone. Wise men (wizards) seem always to have flourished there. At one time, every village had its dyn hysbys. It was said that they maintained their numbers by persuading ignorant country-people to sacrifice their children to the Devil in order to turn them into wise men.

Witches put spells on animals belonging to neighbors who annoyed them. If a cow was the victim it would grow sick for no apparent reason, perhaps stop giving milk, and even die. “Witching” a pig would cause it to have a seizure. There was an example of an old witch living near Llangadock in Carmarthenshire. She had witched a pig and was compelled to unwitch it. She went and put her hand on its back and gave the counter-charm in Welsh, “God keep you to your owner.”

Mary Lewis, the Welsh folklorist, knew a witch who lived not much more than a mile (1.6km) from her own home. The witch was called Mary Perllan Peter. The custom in Wales was to avoid using surnames as there were only a few, and far too many people going by the name of Jones or Davies or Evans, so the person’s forename was used along with their address. Mary lived at a house called Perllan Peter, deep in a wooded ravine. Once she asked a neighbor to take her some corn. He agreed reluctantly, as the path down to her cottage was very steep and the sack of corn was heavy. He spilt some on the way down and Mary was very angry. She muttered threats to him as he was leaving. When he got home, he was amazed to see his little mare sitting on her haunches and staring wildly. He tried in vain to pull her to her feet. The man became frightened, and thought of the witch’s threats. He set off to find Mary, to get her to remove the spell. She went to the mare and said simply, “What ails you now?” The mare jumped to her feet and was as well as ever.

Other, similar stories were told about Mary.

In Cardiganshire, as in other rural districts, it was commonly believed that when the butter would not “come” when it was being churned it had been bewitched. There were always remedies. One was to hang a branch from a rowan tree over the dairy door. Another was to put a knife in the churn; witches, like fairies, hate iron.

When Mary Lewis was staying at Aberdovey, she noticed a strangely shaped depression on the top of the hill behind the school. When she asked about it, she was told it was called the Witch’s Grave, that a witch was supposed to have been burned there and her ashes were buried on the spot. The old village green used to be up on that little plateau and if there ever was a witch-burning, that would have been the place. That was the only example Mary Lewis found of witches being ill-treated.

In about 1600, however, the Reverend Rees Prichard wrote a hymn against conjurers:

To drag children through a hoop,

Or flame of fire on All Hallows Eve,

And taking them to the mill bin to be shaken,

Is the way of sacrificing them to the Evil One.

The first image may refer to an old Welsh custom of passing delicate children through a split ash to cure them of rickets and other ailments. The intention was to effect a cure, though, not to dedicate the child to the Devil.

Some of the stories about wizards reveal them to be frauds. A wise man who lived at a farm near Borth, not far from Aberystwyth, was frequently consulted; he sometimes wrote charms for people to wear. A girl in the district was ailing and her relatives thought a spell had been put on her. They went to the wizard, who told them that the first person they met on the way home was the witch who had put the spell on the girl. They set off and the first person they met was a harmless old man whom they knew must be innocent. Naturally they hurried back to the wise man to remonstrate, but he was as cool as could be: “It was not he, but his brother, who is dead. The girl will not be well until the brother’s body is decayed.” He was a poor and unconvincing wizard, to say the least.

Sometimes, surprisingly, it was the vicar who was the local wizard. There was a well-known Vicar Pritchard of Pwllheli who was well-known for being able to lay ghosts. A hundred years ago he was still remembered in Merionethshire as a useful man to bring in if people were troubled by ghosts. He went armed with book and candle and said to one ghost, “Now, will you promise me to cease troubling this house as long as this candle lasts?” The spirit gladly promised, thinking there was perhaps an hour to wait. But the vicar put out the candle, put it into a lead box, and sealed and buried the box under a tree, where it still lies. What he was doing was in a long tradition of Welsh witchcraft.

As well as witches and wizards, there were also herb doctors, who prescribed various substances—often rather unpleasant substances—as cures. Dried earthworms were prescribed for fits. Oil of earthworms was prescribed for the nerves and “pain of the joints.” Snail water was particularly awful.

RECIPE FOR SNAIL WATER

Of Garden Snails two pounds, the juice of ground ivy, colt’s foot, scabious lungwort, purslain, ambrosia, Paul’s betony, hog’s blood and white wine, dried tobacco leaves, liquorice elecampane, orris, cotton seeds, annis seeds, saffron, petals of red roses, violets and borage. Steep all of this three days and then distil. Then drink. [Readers are strongly advised not to try this.]

A man called Brookes wrote A General Dispensatory in 1753 and in it he listed some of the odd materials currently used by medics and quacks. Various stones were recommended: Eagle-stone, Jew’s stone, Blood stone, and several others. Brookes claimed, “The stones are cried up as an antidote against all manner of poisons, plagues, contagious diseases, malignant fevers, the smallpox and measles.” Sometimes the stone was ground and drunk as a powder in a drink; sometimes it was applied externally by being rubbed onto the body. A particular stone, the size of a large marble, was used repeatedly in Cardiganshire to cure goitre.

In some parts of Wales a dried toad tucked into the armpit was believed to ward off fever. The unfortunate toads were put into an earthen pot and gradually dried in a moderate oven until they were dry enough to reduce to a powder. A similar powder made from bees “trimly decks a bald head being washed with it.”

Some remedies were very ordinary (rubbing a potato on a joint to cure rheumatism, and nettle tea for the chest), while others were not so (crab’s eyes to cure pleurisy, and snail broth to cure consumption). Amber was worn as a powerful charm against blindness, the evil eye—and witches.

WYVERN

See Dragon.

Y DDRAIG GOCH

See Dragon.

YEW

The yew has always been held in awe because of its very long life. It used to be said that yews were grown in churchyards because churchyards were enclosed and penning yews in was a way of preventing livestock from being poisoned by grazing on the tree (yew berries are poisonous, which gives the tree an association with death that is apt, given that churchyard yews are surrounded by graves). This explanation may have some truth in it, but some English churchyard yews are 1,500 years old, which means that they were growing before Christianity arrived. This supports the idea of churches being built on sites that were already held sacred: pagan sites.

The yew grows in an unusual way, with new stems growing around the outside of the tree. This makes it a symbol of self-regeneration. Because it seems, to human bystanders, to live forever, it has become a symbol of everlasting life.

The churchyard yew was doubtless reverenced in the early days because of its associations with old pagan beliefs. The later idea of growing yews in a safe place away from livestock gave the tree a new meaning and value. The yew was then tolerated because of the usefulness of its timber, for making spears, shields and, above all, the English longbow.